


Violence

by GryffindorNight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Explicit Sex, Hux is drunk, M/M, meditation anger and kylo, nobody is in a good mood, not even me, pre tfa, the force is a character on itself, torture and explicit violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-04-18 04:52:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14205483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GryffindorNight/pseuds/GryffindorNight
Summary: Under the influence of anger we survive.





	1. The Force I

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there.  
> I've been working on this story for the past two years, but I'm not an English native speaker so I've been translating rather slowly. I've been counting with the help of amazing [UP2L8](http://up2l8.tumblr.com/), she has been beta reading my work and helping me correct my typos and grammar mistakes, always the best to UP2L8.
> 
> Now, I'm envious of those who can write 50k in a week, it took me almost two years to finish this, I did it before I watched TLJ because I didn't want to change anything based on the new movie. And I failed, I already changed one thing, but just the one, I'll tell you all what part it is when we get there.
> 
> For now I'm close to finishing the translation and I hope to publish as fast as I can, but I can't promise punctuality in anyway. 
> 
> I'm waiting you all on the Dark Side.  
> Yo-ho.

**VIOLENCE**

 

“State, in and insofar as it (…) successfully upholds a claim in the monopoly of legitimate use of violence in the execution of its order.”

Max Weber.

 

**The Force I**

 

“The one who understands the vibratory principle has reached the center of power.”

The Kybalion.

 

Kylo Ren is consciousness, conscious. He is in tune with the cadence of it all – with atoms rotating like galaxies, with the movement of the contrite rocks in the abyssal depths of the dark, cold, enormous, and tenebrous planets. He is in sync with the boiling and sonorous crackle of the young stars that allow life to grow. There’s transit, mutation, change, revolution, chaos, order, connection. Existence is an impact, a fact that keeps happening; it is dirty and immeasurable, it is what binds and separates all there is. It’s a stroke.

It is the Force.

It can be sailed like the sea, because it is the movement that allows all others, it is the brutal and absolute consciousness of perpetual darkness. It is the angry and metallic taste in the mouth. It is the inconceivable and incomprehensible extension of life, a circle that returns to the shadow of death. The Force is an action on itself, a connection to embrace in perplexity the vast and overwhelming reality of being. It is detached individualism, that mirage of self, to release one’s self to the fury. It is to ride and be the beast all at once.

The solid and the malleable stop being different; space curves, twists. All there is can be reached because the Force is all; one only has to calmly flow to be able to grasp, feel, channel.

RX-3471 breathes and moves forward into the hall. Her steps are plodding like a horse through the white weight of the snowed peaks. Her emotions are plain and her dread is sweet. She reaches the squared office where Phasma has checked with accuracy and efficiency the order of her troops so many times that the Force tangles here, twists concentrically until it sinks into the floor, the roof, the pipelines, the water, the odorous shit that travels under the main hangar; it spirals into the cold of space, concentrates like pain in the joints, echoes in the hollow caves where, permeated by the Force, white, black, and subservient creatures inhabit.

The stormtroopers are formed in their gracious and static protocol, row upon row in front of the stationed ships. They are like temporary mountain ranges, inert and frozen. The turbines of a landing ship boil like the flames at the core of a planet and fire is an invitation to destruction and order.

The Force curls with the excitement of the troops, mutates within the walls and the circuits, extends and compress, beats like the fragile heart of official Wright, who timidly announces arrivals through the speakers with his mud-brown and rock-gray voice. The sound transits like a wave, whispering like a gelid breeze to the entire ship, bouncing down the halls off the sharp corners, looking for something, and finally stopping RX-3471 in her tracks. She was on her way to patrol the command rooms, but tenses for a second. It is evident, perceived, tasteable.

There’s a disturbance in the Force.

Kylo opens his eyes, moves his fingers, _he is already here_ , thinks and stands up. Sudden annoyance seizes him as he abandons his room, and RX-3471 sweats cold when she sees him, just a few meters away. Kylo Ren hears the flow of her blood under the suit she wears, and in the fear that strikes the air he foresees his Master will summon him any moment now. The ways of the Force are unaccountable, but Kylo doesn’t dwell on the cold of his visions; he feels it may stun his judgement.

There’s a General on his ship, besides.

 

 

 

 

His Master, of course, has a reason to order Kylo and Hux to share command of the Finalizer.

“It will be necessary, Kylo Ren, in order to find the right planet,” says Snoke, and the Force is perturbed, tense.

Kylo feels cold again.

 

 

 

 

Kylo can feel the hot stream of blood flowing through General Hux’s arteries. In the Force Kylo finds him burning, fierce, uneasy, annoyed. They’ve been on board the same ship for an hour. Hux has addressed him with just one cold stare and a protocol salute. At the moment they are experiencing _problems_ with the jump into hyperspace and Hux is ignoring him.

Kylo breathes three times, deeply. “What is the problem?”

The air in the bridge roils as officer Henderson answers, making a gesture of clear fright, “The tenth engine is overheated, sir, the technician are-”

Anger floods him like a hurricane, Kylo _feels_ the eleven engines in a row, all overheated because of a malfunction in one of the refrigerant bombs. His blood bursts and the torment wins over him.

Henderson stops talking when he lights up his saber, then says, “Sir, we’ve tried everything since the last rotation, just as  you ord-”

Henderson whines in terror while Kylo discharges his impatience all over the screen that shows the engine temperatures. Fury clouds his senses as three metallic shards, still red and burning from Kylo’s strike, hit the bridge floor. If he screams that clearly they haven’t tried hard enough and that from his room he can smell the broken wire, well, it’s because they asked for it.

Hux clears his throat, and Kylo feels him arrange himself inside his coat. With his wizened face he issues orders. Three terse phrases and a wrist movement are all he needs: suspend power systems, reboot the main engine, and recheck the seventh temperature bomb. He narrows his eyes as a new hologram finally indicates the malfunction. Then, with an expression that can only be honest disgust, he turns to look at Kylo. Kylo feels his wrath easily, electric around them.

“Hm.” Hux reproaches without opening his mouth, wrinkling his face even more. “So this is what Supreme Leader meant when he asked me to report on you daily.”

Kylo isn’t allowed to kill him, so he resolves not to.

Instead he doesn’t respond and ignores Hux, or tries to at least, because the Force keeps streaming and he can’t help but notice. He refuses to allow Hux’s attitude to perturb his thoughts. When the ship hits hyperspace Kylo Ren meditates in the gloom, destruction and power at his reach, at his favor. His Master has always advised him to exploit the dark side of the Force with more control and not to allow darkness to simply use him, even if it is hard to resist.

Kylo breathes, and resists, seeking distraction. On board the Finalizer are eighty thousand two hundred and twenty four stormtroopers.  Kylo divagates to each one. They are all different in the Force, like snowflakes, infinite and varied in their irremediable pattern of falling, and falling, and falling again.

For the next thirty-four days he transcends the almost three kilometers of the ship, beyond to the immensity of space in search of the place his Master has ordered him to find. He floats in the black void without course, the vast emptiness dotted sparely with tiny embers of light. He can almost touch them, reaching with his fingers to feel them, out there where the Force is the only thing connecting the tiny spots of matter. He can almost touch the place he’s looking for.

On the thirty-fifth day he feels the cold as well, and his Master calls for him.

 

 

 

 

At the other side of the wall is Hux. The Supreme Leader suggested looking at the rhythm that surrounds Hux for the answers they seek, not into the infinity of the universe outside the ship. Kylo had been aboard the ship eight days longer than Hux, which had been enough to familiarise himself with the rhythm of the Force between the metallic walls and empty shelves of the next room.

It is different now.

Hux has books, uniforms, sweat, anger, _presence_. He also has the blueprints and a written report on the weapon he plans to build. Kylo has avoided everything to do with Hux because he hates him, but his Master has explained that in the Force is the answer. Kylo just hasn’t looked at the right place.

He reads the blueprints that Hux delivered to the high commands of the First Order. He reads them thrice, in every order, and starts to feel something similar to what it feels to eat the same thing too many times. In the Force it is similar to when his Master called Kylo and Hux together for the first time. It enervates him to recognize how well explained and developed the project is; it’s a kind of strength Kylo doesn’t want for himself, but in annoyance can admit is powerful.

Kylo meditates for a moment on the creation of an artefact able to destroy solar systems and what that implies. He decides it is an act of cruelty that could be justified, as it means power, fear, passion, determination. The use of reason, he supposes, is in a demure and elegant way an extension of the Force itself, even if reason doesn’t mean connection or the understanding of it. He rearranges his robe where it covers his head and checks that the temperature is regulated, wondering what it means that he is feeling so much cold.

 

 

 

 

Hux has a lot of things and all of them have a place. He follows a self established routine that he completes with diligence. He keeps himself serene, uninterested, dry. The words he uses most in his reports are fact, order, and control. He meticulously polishes his black boots at the same hour. But there’s a trace in the Force that Kylo could follow like a path to the other side of the Galaxy. It is red, tangled at the bottom of the comb that he puts in the third drawer, along with the lotion, toothpaste, deodorant, razor blade, small droid razor, two litters of whisky, cigarettes box, and blaster pistol.

Sometimes three hours after his shift, Hux is still awake, training until he breaths with no rhythm and his bedroom floor is covered in sweat. Sometimes he reads one of the forty-eight printed books he brought with him. Sometimes he opens the fifth drawer and goes through the blueprints of his weapon, interminably shuffling the paper and staring at the holograms.

Kylo is cutting the void, the Finalizer is in Anoth’s orbit, technicians swarm like bees in between the three ships that in freezing and monstrous cadence fill the Force with their metallic rumble. They are performing revisions on the engine cooling systems. If Kylo exhales slow enough he can feel in his tongue the harsh words of every mechanic. Hux has already drunk three glasses of whisky when suddenly he emits something heavy. It is not as disconcerting as it is intriguing; it feels like thick air in the ventilation duct, sliding off the walls while Hux stands up, puts the bottle in its place, turns off the lights of his room, and with no hesitation rips off a tissue from the dark red box on his table. Kylo is the monster under the bed, but he finds that he is so cold that he breaks with every move Hux makes, with his dead weight on the bed, with the hand he slips into his underwear.

Kylo opens his eyes, a little perturbed, a little annoyed for not seeing it coming, a little disturbed to have witnessed this. He’s colder than before.  He has a sour taste in his mouth.

Kylo cannot return to his meditative state until he feels the Force settle around the slow murmur of Hux’s breathing as he sleeps. Kylo feels bewildered, uneasy. It takes him almost fifteen minutes more to be nothing again, to be all again, three kilometers of ships, eighteen kilometer of technicians, laughing in the breach of the Finalizer Resurgent when Wright dozes off, a moan when a stormtrooper touches one boiling valve in the engine room, Hux’s chest inflating, red and black, space and time.

 

 

 

 

Kylo is cold when he wakes up, and Hux wakes up knowing he’s being watched. Kylo perceives it. And it isn’t like he’s _watching_ in the actual sense. Kylo is scrutinizing all that is around him, looking for a trace in the Force, for a lead, for something to explain what his Master felt.

He’s been meditating for hours, slept only a few. There’s two milligrams of pure iron in the left corner of the room, where Hux sometimes drops one edge of his blanket while he sleeps on his right side. In the Force iron is one of the most particular metals Kylo has ever found. In its solidity he can feel the constant beating of the sun that once held it close to its core and conceived its hardness. He can feel the flames and the light, traveling. Hux is stepping into the shower, frowning, looking around himself from time to time as if he expects to find somebody.

Kylo is caressing with ease the three thousand turbolasers of the ship. Hux’ discomfort unnerves him a little. Hux doesn’t really know discomfort.

Maybe he should know, because it’s been cycles since the conversation he had with his Master. Kylo is starting to believe that the solution is inside Hux’s mind, not around him, and that it would be easier to get in, scramble the awkward things a little, and get out. His Master told him not to murder him, or do anything too obnoxious to him.

“He’s useful,” his Master had said, the Force dark and huge in his words.

“For now,” Kylo said, and his Master didn’t correct him.

Kylo supposes that, as it happens with most non Force-sensitive creatures, the less disturbing way to access someone’s mind is by watching their dreams.

 

 

 

 

Brendol Hux has red hair. He’s a rigid man, lineal, with blue eyes; he’s looking at the boy with affection. It is an odd face for him, his son hasn't seen it enough.

“Vader is a lot stronger than any Jedi I’ve ever met,” he says while he eats a fruit Kylo never saw before. “The only person who was never intimidated by him was your mother, son; those who believe in the Force posses an aura that’s like heavy smoke.”

The words slur in the man’s mouth, as if he were chewing them along with the fruit. Kylo tries to catch the details, all he can see: there’s a gurrcat purring underneath Brendol’s legs and food on the roof; there are children running through the walls and the painful voice of a wookie.

Brendol laughs. His son has disheveled hair and very opened eyes, just a kid, “Are you going to kill them all?” the father asks, and Kylo tenses, because the wookie’s voice is asking the same thing, the children are running around yelling the same thing. The kid, Hux, looks straight at him.

Hux awakes. Kylo has a headache, and his face is burning as if it were cut in half.

“Get out of my head, Ren,” says Hux out loud, absolutely furious, red.

Kylo hears him like a rumble inside his skull, where he’s held him since he forced himself to, always present, screaming, insulting. But now he lets it be, departs, he’s cold, he’s tired. The Force is revolving like an aimless tempest inside his chest and he leans on his bed. Command rooms are sound proof but he can hear the breathing of seventy five thousand life forms aboard the ship, and suddenly he’s overwhelmed.

 

 

 

 

Kylo meditates with no pause, and when he’s back his stomach is empty. He’s feeling omnipresent while also not knowing how long he’s been out. The hits and grunts of the troopers who are training almost a kilometer and a half away sound so close that he could follow their spontaneous movements with his eyes closed, by the hand of the Force.

But he still doesn’t know which planet is adequate.

Hux is also looking for the planet. He has spent several nights diving into data, sailing the bluish sea of holograms in his room, asking the system if this or that planet has a stable core, asking if this or that sun produces how much electromagnetic radiation. Kylo has climbed the finely knit threads of his overcoat and over Hux’s shoulder has watched him simplify equation after equation.

Kylo is easily distracted, wandering through the Force, the ship, inside his mask, from side to side of the bridge, and the answer slips away from him, is a word on the tip of his tongue.

When McBrian informs him without being able to meet his eyes that the Resistance took down a ship close to Naboo’s solar system, anger scales over his shoulders, makes his neck stiff, his view dark, his mouth bitter. Kylo destroys all in his path: doors, droids, computers. He unloads such rage, McBrian cries trembling, now unable to tear his eyes away. When Kylo turns off his saber, sparks and alarms invade him, and he realizes he’s trembling from cold. Hux is standing behind him. Kylo doesn’t look at him. He knows his pulse in the Force by memory.

“We’ll have to detour the searching route,” Hux says with no inflexion.

Kylo breathes and the mask makes him sound like a beast about to charge. “We won’t detour the route. I’m close to finding it”.

Hux observes Kylo with condescension. He’s the only person who’s dared to do that in years, and it makes him writhe in anger. Kylo wants to squeeze his hand into a fist and watch him collapse.

“Yesterday, when the calefaction lowered to economize energy, you went raging to the machines section. In a tantrum you destroyed four stabilizers. We have to buy replacements before the damage spreads to other systems of the ship.”

After speaking with the calmest of expressions, Hux turns on his heel and walks towards the bridge. When Kylo lights the saber and the three ends snarl and grumble as he destroys the useless, Hux simply ignores him. Kylo can feel in the Force his unmeasured annoyance.

Kylo stops being patient.

He stalks Hux now with no dissimulation. For the rest of the day he’s locked in his room and underneath Hux’s footsteps, hanging the air behind Hux’s ears, lurking in between the steam ironed creases of Hux’s uniform.

Hux is walking out of the bridge when his shift is over. The ship is sailing hyperspace. Hux frowns, stops when he’s alone (except for Kylo, who is with the walls, with the red buttons of the communicators, with the air above Hux hair).

“Stop this,” says Hux, and Kylo is a long heavy presence floating around him, almost there, in the middle of the fully illuminated and cold hallway.

Kylo decides not to stop.

“Why do you insist on doing this?” asks Hux. He sounds curious and upset, rising his hands and flexing them in the rarefied air.  

 _Because I haven’t found what I’m looking for_.

Hux closes his eyes for a moment, evidently uncomfortable. “This isn’t the way to look,” he affirms out loud.

Kylo can taste what he’s thinking anyway. He answers without moving his lips, sitting on his bed. _I’ve tried everything_.

In his mind Hux is also skeptical. He laughs and starts walking again. “You haven’t tried to stop being an imbecile.”

Kylo opens his eyes. Today he’s thought about killing this man no less than five times. He’s cold.

A few hours later, after training and briefly reporting to his Master, Kylo decides to approach an observation method less notorious, less turbulent in the air, less dark with eyes closed. Hux’s neck hair stands on end when he feels him in the room. Days ago he began to react like that, but he says nothing, keeps filling out his reports (because he does that every four days before he sleeps, reading and commenting on all behaviours to inform Phasma).

 _What would be an appropriate surface temperature for a planet suitable to our needs?_ Kylo asks. He knows when he is inside Hux’s head he causes pressure, making a weird wrinkle on Hux’s forehead.

“Hm.” Hux stops writing, seeming unsurprised by the question. He massages his temple and Kylo feels he could break his head from the inside. “Cold. It must be cold,” Hux says out loud, even as his memories bring suggestions of size, ideal core temperature, nature of climatic stations, proximity to other planets; not all of this was in the blueprints Kylo read. “It doesn’t have to be a huge planet. A medium moon would be enough,” Hux says.

_No need to speak out loud, Hux_

The man shakes his head. “No need to get in my head, Ren. You could come and talk. We’re less than ten meters away.”

Kylo gets out of his mind, exasperated.

But it’s fine, he resolves, because now he knows why he’s cold. His Master was right. It was all about Hux.

If he lets himself go with the frozen wind that’s everywhere, if he follows the white trail the stromtroopers leave behind with their smooth armor, it all leads to the same place.  It’s a place he never saw in his life. He can count five peaks, twelve peaks, twenty-three peaks, eighty snowed peaks in the same continent. He feels that he is running across the endless expanse of cold, white plains.  When he’s one tree among thousands in those vast forests he can hear the echo of his sword, and without knowing where it comes from, he feels a pain that consumes him.

 

 

 

 

A new day, on the bridge. Hux asks where they are, and Henderson quickly answers that they’re passing through the Ilum solar system. Kylo cannot help but remember that the Jedi used to travel there to get the crystals that bring life to their lightsabers. He can feel himself expand and mix with the stars, hear voices and rhymes. He can feel the ripples in the Force made by thousands of Jedi who aforetime followed the same route he’s taking. And then he can see the giant construction, a cannon the size of a dozens of ships, the red lightning that shatters, and death, oh, he can feel it, cold and sweet under the skin, he’s seduced by it. He wonders if, where it’s cold, there are also Kyber crystals.

It must be Hux’s eyes, icy and blue, fixed on the distorted stars, that take him there. Kylo can see them reflect the red light that ends the world.

Kylo almost jumps when darkness puts him back in his body. _There it is after all,_ he thinks. He sprints out of his room like an avalanche.

“Stop the ship,” he orders when he enters the bridge.

He stops beside the technicians that control speed, and Hux turns to look at him.

“Do not stop the ship,” Hux says.

“Stop the ship _now!_ ”

Hux shakes his head, looks at him with infinite annoyance. “We’re four parsecs from our destination, Ren, we wont st-”

Kylo growls. The Force is with him. He destroys four computers at his right, and the ship jolts.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Hux murmurs to himself, grabbing hold of the nearest solid surface to brace himself, more angry than scared.

Kylo jumps out of hyperspace with a three kilometers ship under his feet, and he thinks for a moment that his father said that same thing many times. It’s been a while since he’s thought about his father. Kylo doesn’t long for Han Solo, even if he remembers his arms holding him when he was a child and a sense of wellbeing mows at his chest. It hurts so much that he doesn’t have to hold to anything. The Force ties him to the deck, evolves him, petrified, in agony, trembling.

“We cannot jump to hyperspace,” is what he hears when he comes back to his senses.

Through the Force Hux is everything loathsome. Kylo smells the hate seeping into his body again, tears dry in his eyes thanks to how offended he feels.

“A map” he says without turning to Hux, who snorts in front of him pointing at a red light. Kylo thinks he never heard him scream, not like this, full of anger, all red and blue, cold and black, saying that the engine control doesn’t work. Kylo wants to laugh, but he activates the saber instead and the technician on his left looks red and tormented.

“I need a map” he says again. The technician presses a couple buttons, doesn’t look at him, smells like terror, red fruits, and McBrian. The map is blue like Hux eyes, and it’s almost empty. In that emptiness Kylo feels the planets and the primitive life forms that technology doesn’t detect, points to the exact place with a finger, and feels freed.

“There it is,” he says.

“What?” asks Hux, but they both know the answer.

“The planet,” Kylo says anyway, to weight it on his tongue. It is an accomplishment.  “The cold, the snow, the destruction, there it is.”

Hux stays very still and looks at Kylo’s finger as if he’s being pranked. “There’s nothing there,” he says.

Kylo observes him with cold determination. “Prove it.”

It cannot be seen on the map, but Kylo can hear the storm’s echo, and his cheeks burn because the cold cuts like a knife.

 


	2. The Force II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there.  
> I've had a wild couple of days, now I'm bald and don't have an appendix, my birthday was the other day. I've been doing a lot of things very slowly, I just finished the chapter I was translating when I published the last time, so yeah, I'm coming down slow. But I'll get there, this is number 2 and number 5 is already good to go, for now here I am again.
> 
> I can't say thank you enough for the kudos and the comments, also to my beta UP2L8. 
> 
> I'm aware I'm about to get dark, I hope you all to join me on the dark side, I will bring you music the next time.
> 
> See you soon.
> 
> Yo-ho.

**The Force II**

 

  * Consciousness: Recognize reality, recognize one’s self.
  * Awareness: Recognize moral, what is right and what is wrong.



“It is not the man’s awareness what determines his being, but on the contrary, it is the social being what determines his awareness”

U.

 

 

They don’t jump to the hyperspace. The computers are so badly damaged that Hux fears that operating them manually may cause the malfunction to rearrange the engine system catastrophically. Kylo should stop observing the General. He has already found what his Master expected; he has nothing to find by searching in Hux.

It’s just that finding the moon has pained him. Kylo finds himself not wanting to think of Han Solo, this is not the time for painful memories. There’s something that makes him doubt himself. What, he’s not sure. His torment is like tearing parts of his body apart just to sew them back, only to tear them apart again. When Hux slides his hand inside his underwear again after his shift, Kylo has to shift his attention elsewhere, irritated. There’s no help for him. Kylo is burning in slow fire and he suffers, suffers so much.

After five hours of swimming in darkness and the ethereal light of the sun behind the ship, Kylo falls asleep doubting, and he hates himself for every second of it. There’s something that keeps him from being certain. The darkness is questionable, just before his eyes weight too much.

 

 

 

 

 

Look at all that hair, that’s all I’m saying.

Uncle Chewie is, surely, one of the best creatures in the whole universe. Ben has pulled every hair of his body because he’s an impetuous baby and Chewbacca never finds himself bothered, even when this particular human phase isn’t friendly to him. He puts up with it, because it is Ben, another Solo, another Skywalker.

He’s got big eyes and he feels yellow underneath the tongue, dangerous, loving. Ben loves that wookiee a lot. In his arms, huge and hairy, Ben has fallen asleep many times, has cried many times, has begged not to be taken from home. His furry uncle assured him they would never stop seeing each other; he said it with his fluffy warmth flowing through the Force like a blanket, like his hairy chest.

Han once complained with jealousy that if his son preferred the wookiee’s company to his, then Leia should too, particularly when she is in a bad mood and needed to unload her anger. Han already has white hair; Ben notices as he is embracing Chewbacca’s legs.

“With me Ben only complains, and with me Leia only screams.” His father is pouting.

Chewie murmurs something that Ben doesn’t understand and Han smiles crooked. “I know, she screams the best way.”

Chewbacca reprimands him with offended howling while covering Ben’s ears with his big hairy hands. It’s not like he is old enough to understand what that remark means. He does now, though, and feels black in his gut. Ben embraces the wookiee harder. Fortunately Chewie is very skillful and can co-pilot while being comforting. Han is whistling something sad.

Ben’s uncle is a tremendous event of existence, is tenacious, real, is… ( _ Hmm, haha, how could you say something like that uncle Chewie? _ ) surely the weirdest old man there is. Wookiees live for so long that even at more than three times the age of his father, Chewie is still young. Ben enjoys his rumor in the Force; he’s huge and long, warm as his fur. There’s always something sympathetic in his eyes, those eyes that have seen more than most. ( _ You would let me shoot it for real, your crossbow? _ )

Coruscant is a cold planet, not because of the temperature being low necessarily, but because the skyscrapers cover the sky and life isn’t green and clean. ( _ Do you want to know what bothers me, uncle? _ ) Chewbacca used to think of mountains with thick forests, wide rivers that reflect the sky, birds rising in flight. It brought him peace, to imagine the sound of the wind. Ben has been on his shoulders when they were in the midst of tree branches and storm. Ben knew even then that Chewbacca was a contradiction. As gentle as he could be, his crossbow meant death. Ben can feel the curves of the metal in the Force, bubbling memories, and fury.

Ben never talks about Snoke with his uncle, and never asks to fire his crossbow again, but he always remembers the splintering, dark sensation that bloomed in his chest when he felt all that focused, directed power surging at once.

Han and Chewbacca fight often, and the Millenium Falcon used to have technical problems just as often. There are asteroids, the ‘check engine’ button is lit, and the whole ship smells like Corellia’s spices. Chewie doesn’t see anything unusual in the machine room. Besides, Han ate the last portion of those crispy insects the wookiee likes so much. The ship trembles and there’s a lot of screaming and curses in several languages. Nobody is looking at Ben. Nobody has told him he shouldn’t be so afraid. Nobody tells him he won’t lose anything he loves.

“Chewbacca, partner, keep doing that and you’ll kill us all.”

Ben has heard them speak many times of naked woman, he has understood Wookieespeak for many years. His neck hair stands on end when his uncle answers, “Yes Han,” bored, a little sassy, “and when you die I’ll be staring you in the eye. Shut it asshole, I’ve only fixed this ship two thousand times before.”

Kylo Ren opens his eyes with his heart on his mouth. He can feel it under his tongue, the warmth of his uncle’s eyes when he looked at him with sadness the last time they saw each other. In his stomach he can remember the feeling, like falling while walking. The Force flowed charged with pain. He has tears in his eyes. He hates himself so much that he shakes. Doubt is yellow and vibrates in his guts, crispy, warm.

Kylo puts the mask on, doesn’t concern himself with dressing, his feet take him where darkness prefers. When he feels the other Star Destroyer jump out of hyperspace kilometers away he realizes he had his eyes closed.

He sees black with them open anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

To live in order is to live in peace; peace brings agreement and sustainability.

The order is the way.

Hux immediately receives the report that the engineers who are able to rebuild  _ all  _ the principal system of the ship from scratch – Ren’s fault, of course- have just arrived. It bothers him greatly to interrupt his rest, but he stands with diligence. He quickly sheathes himself inside his uniform, flattening the creases, then pulls his feet out of his room with the latent sensation of disturbance, of unsettlement in the air. He wonders while he walks what Kylo Ren is doing, because he knows this uneasy feeling must be about him. Hux recognizes the overwhelming sensation of dead weight, dark, irresistible; he recognizes his anger and that recognition is far from pleasant.

The floor is clean, which he appreciates, where less than an hour ago there was roasted debris everywhere. Now everything is in its proper place, including the guards that lower their heads hurriedly when they see him approach. Hux would be at ease completely if it weren’t for the gut feeling that’s far too similar to what he felt when he found out Ren could pursue and watch him from the air breezes. He has a bad feeling, as always. Kylo Ren is a bad feeling.

Technicians salute him. One of them has already run a complete damage diagnostic and holding a rigid salute, tells him the repairs will take ten hours, his manner tightly processional. Hux rearranges the beret he’s wearing. He can smell the betun, the shaving cream, the fresh chemical that the Order uses to wash clothes in the big ships. He likes this technician.

“We’ll have to reset the main computer to install the new energy remote control, which isn’t a total disaster, General. The new model has much better performance.”

Hux nods. There’s agreement, peace. There’s order.

Or almost.

Hux leaves the bridge, full of construction droids, technicians, and officers on shift, and seized by a sensation of fatality, he searches for the first monitor that allows him to check the security cameras.

From the personal reflections he makes almost every day on the ethics of commanding thousands of living beings, and hopefully the whole Galaxy in the future, Hux has come to some firm conclusions. One of them is the undeniable reality of balance, the necessity for the mutual cooperation of all living creatures to reach a better life experience, and the absolute need for guidance, for a shepherd to lead the way.

Hux is sure that by means of gathering all aspects, the absolute may be obtained. All solar systems united meant a powerful Galaxy. The problem is that comprehension of the fundamental nature of the universe varies with each distinct species, and that makes collaboration where all have equal standing ridiculous. A governing council shouldn’t suffer the presence of the ignorant, or those of lower brain development, because it would bring eventual chaos. So much time would be wasted in the contemplation of empty, ignorant views. So much effort would be wasted on fixing mistakes and solving problems previously solved by others. That was what coming out of ignorance meant: to account for the many mistakes one makes and overcome them. That’s how species evolve.

Therefore the wisest, the strongest, the most experienced should be in control. Only the elite could understand the function of such a complex system, and would thus be able to organize all that exists. They, and only they, should be the guides, the leaders, the shepherds. The course of history would evolve the inferior intelligences to eventually understand the inherent need for guidance to a better existence. Like children, they would grow up to realize that what their parents said and did was necessary, even if it caused them anger before they understood.

 

 

 

 

 

What is right and what is wrong?

 

 

 

 

 

Hux doesn’t have to see him, because Kylo has left a trail from hallway to hallway. He has left his destructive marks against the walls. The trail extends to fifteen security cameras so far, and Hux doesn’t want to see one more. He looks at the sparks and the flames in some hallways with despair before he shouts to call one of the thousand technicians off the bridge. He cools down for a moment, promises himself the Supreme Leader will acknowledge every disaster Ren has left behind, with a paying bill printed and attached to the report.

Afterwards he begins to walk towards the lower levels. Hux doesn’t know where Ren is exactly. He will follow the trail and use his mounting anger to arm him with courage on the way. He holds his blaster tight against his waist, knowing he has to face him immediately or Ren’s tantrums will definitely bring the ship down.

 

 

 

 

 

In a Resurgent Class Star Destroyer of the First Order, shipments of food are brought in by old Empire ships. Many of those shipments come from Ukio; that means there will be fruits and wine, sugar, salt, several kinds of flour, several kinds of eggs, meat. That was good.

Once the Resistance took down a ship that carried food supplies. Four Star Destroyers had to feed their crews with unsalted mashed potatoes for several weeks. It caused severe depression among the troops. Only Phasma had not complained, even though she had lost a significant amount of weight. That was bad.

In the new Jedi temple, a little padawan kept a pigeon alive after it fell from its nest during a storm. She did it with the Force, for days, keeping its heart beating until it healed and was able to fly. Luke was impressed by her concentration, her kindness. That was good.

It all changed after the padwan’s parents died while attacking one of the few ships that survived the fall of the Empire. Luke felt relief for the troops of the Resistance, but torment while his padawan was consumed by vengeance. That was bad.

One side took it as very good that Kylo finished off the new Jedi order and exiled Skywalker. The other took it as an act of an evil being, consumed by hatred and darkness. Kylo doesn’t see it as either good or bad, but as an act as it is, one that made and makes sense.

There are planets where slavery is indisputable part of social life, is cultural and considered tactical; in many others it is considered barbarism. There are planets where cannibalism provides another variety of meat for consumption. There are planets where meat consumption is forbidden altogether. There are planets on which societies murder themselves due to fear or hate for their differences, their gender, their race. There are planets where one class has exterminated the others and now all live in harmony.

Good or bad depend on the eye that judges them. They are relative, nothing by themselves. To kill or to eat is not inherently good or bad; to kill or to eat could be anything, depending on the context. You could kill a cow or a man, eat a cow or a man, the right and wrong of it would depend on the eyes observing it. For something to be right or wrong it’s necessary for someone to decide. Right or wrong need history to define them or they don’t exist.

The right and the wrong need someone to think about them to make sense.

Kylo doesn’t think the Force is good or bad; the Force just is.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo Ren is disorder.

Not only in the physical sense. Hux suspects he’s emotionally wrong as well. Nobody uses a mask unless they want to hide something. That sinister helmet has to mean something unresolved, a trauma, pain, conflict. It is a firm denial that keeps him from showing his own face, it is a rejection. Hux supposes Ren is insecure about his aspect. Hux can’t calculate his exact age, but Ren likely isn’t much older or much younger than him, so he’s probably around thirty. It’s a pity, really. So much potential numbed by the blend of low self esteem and a childish attitude. Years ago, before working with him, Hux thought Ren was frustrated, not only with all around him, but with himself. Perhaps shame also played a role. Sometimes Hux thinks Ren doesn’t recognize himself.

Hux doesn’t know if he would recognize him either. Most of the time he finds Kylo fearsome but immature, ignorant, lacking of an order that would bring him ease.

The lower he goes into the ship, the more turbid the environment becomes. Around every corner the stormtroopers seem more uncomfortable. When Hux hears the rumble of turbolaser batteries, he wonders how much farther he has to go, and how much more his ship has to suffer from the consequences of Ren having a particularly bad day. While he keeps walking, he wonders about the Force, because even though his understanding is vague, he supposes it has something to do with all this.

 

 

 

 

 

When Kylo arrives at the trooper training complex, he has to remove the mask. Ironically, he finds he cannot breathe easily, he cannot see straight. He puts it in the floor and with agony resolves that he doesn’t deserve it.

Darth Vader is an ideal. His conviction was immovable. His legacy allowed him, to all those who paid enough attention, to follow an impeccable effort for the functioning of the Galaxy at the peak of its potential. His devotion to the Force and his incredible talent have not been surpassed by anybody before or since. Kylo believes he inherited that talent from his grandfather. He has the capacity for doing something with it, of fulfilling all those unreached goals, and surpassing them. Before he steps into the tatami he stretches his arms, legs, chest, mind.

The day Anakin Skywalker died his body survived because of his affinity with the Force. Darth Vader wasn’t a step to the dark side and nothing more. It wasn’t a simple decision. It was a physical and metaphysical metamorphosis. Darth Vader’s face was always his helmet, and that helmet symbolized the transition, the complete rejection of the light. To Kylo the mask represents the dismissal of who he was to embrace the darkness as a whole. The mask is a transformation that pretends to be complete, like his grandfather’s, impeccable.

He build it with the Force, just like he did with his saber. 

He finishes stretching and lights his saber again.

 

 

 

 

 

Hux hadn’t thought he’d see a lot of freckles.

Ren isn’t wearing his usual robe, he wears only trousers and boots. He’s so angry that the air is dense, and Hux shivers. He is hyper aware of the friction between the cloth of his pants and the hair of his thighs, between the hair of his neck and the uniform collar. Ren has freckles on his back, over the shoulders, on his arms, around the long, white scars that cross his skin, most fully healed.

The ambiance is rotten, dirty, morbid.

His helmet is lying on the floor and Ren seems to be doing a kata, fluid fast movements, then stillness. He breaths deep, then strikes with force immediately. Hux is sure that all stormtroopers who are resting in the levels above must be awake. He feels like there’s an enormous shadow looming; he’s felt it before in Ren’s presence, the darkness longer, easier, when he vibrated with anger, breathing heavily with his mask on.

Freckles.

Kylo Ren turns around, maintains a ready posture for a couple seconds, and Hux examines him: the moles above the eyebrow, the moles in the line of his jaw, the moles everywhere. It is more disturbing than he imagined, seeing him like this, because Ren doesn’t look like the coldblooded murderer that he is. He appears to be just a boy, black and white, red where the light of his sword reflects on his skin. Then the air cuts in two. He moves fast and his movements are so complex that Hux has the feeling Ren might hurt himself any moment. But Ren attacks the emptiness with a fury that appears instinctive. Hux cannot distinguish his eyes clearly from his vantage point in the observation gallery, but he can see his general expression, despaired, anxious.

Ren repeats the complete form twice, then he turns off his saber just before lacerating himself. Hux watches him, intrigued. He never considered him a disciplined solider, those words did not fit his volatile temperament. But Ren starts the form over, keeping his legs flexed at ninety degrees most of the time, he doesn’t waver, doesn’t hesitate, kicks and turns in the air with the vibrant sound of his sword.

His hand leaves the saber in the air, red and angry, he spins and stretches to take the sword again while giving it his back. Then he moves so fast that Hux thinks he wounded himself, and he almost moves to check.

But no, the sword hits the ground unlit and Ren is hyperventilating, frowning, as if the air is too heavy to breath.

Hux knows what will happen next, he can smell it coming. Ren snatches up the saber and strikes at the storage lockers with uncontained anger, the burnt boxing equipment spilling to the floor. The sword crackles unstably. Ren is screaming without words. Hux sees two stormtroopers peek from the higher levels and flee swiftly from the spectacle.

Ren walks back to the tatami, assumes a resting posture, growls without saying word, and Hux sees him, there in the middle of his destruction, his tense expression, and doesn’t find him evil, but pained, by a wound that goes through the soul. He wonders if he might be imagining it as Ren starts the kata again, faster, more precise, more fierce.

This time he doesn’t turn off the saber on its course; he catches it without looking, spinning on his body, catching it at his back. He jumps far too high to be a normal human, the sword cuts the air with a dangerous sound, coming close to his face, curving back and behind his heels. Ren’s shoulder length hair is pulled in a bulky pigtail above his crown; if not, Hux supposes the sword would have trimmed it to above his ears.

The form continues, and Hux has the unsetting thought that he was wrong. Ren isn’t an undisciplined solider; he’s a whole army in chaos.

Then he spins in the air, horizontal, his arms enveloping him, his saber rotating with his body. Hux thinks he is feeling the same fear as before because it stayed in the air like a surprised shout that never sounded. Ren hits the floor, the sword off, but Hux can see his wound, one red line on his right side, under his ribs. He once saw his father with a similar wound from a blaster bolt; he had been in bed for a few weeks, recovering.

Hux pulls his communicator out of his pocket at once. “I need a medical droid in the trainin-”

Hux doesn’t finish speaking. He can’t describe exactly what he feels, but it’s like everything is darkness while all the lights are on. Hux feels himself immersed in an obscurity that hurts in his head, overwhelms and consumes him. Ren stands up flexing his arms slowly, the wound looks cauterized, trails scorched where the blood springs. Hux sees him very white for a moment, then of the colour of blood and nothing else. Ren lights up his saber again.

He hits the wound with his fist as he walks to one corner of the tatami, Hux’s eye fixed on the sparkle of blood. Ren’s fingers drip, scarlet, when he wields the lightsaber and starts over.

He screams before jumping, saber and body spin in the air.

He finishes without further misadventure.

Ren turns off the light saber, ties it to his trousers. Bloodstained he walks without limping to his helmet, puts it on his head, leaves.

Is that the Force? Hux wonders.

It’s so dark.

Hux can’t move for a while. He breaths and feels the torrent of power reverberate inside him.

 

 

 

 

 

The Supreme Leader summons them a few hours later, and it’s fine because Hux can’t get to sleep. He feels Ren is in the corner of his eye, in the quite darkness of his room.

 

 

 

 

 

Pain mutates, the Force swirls, Kylo breaths inside his mask with peace of mind. Training turns sorrow into strength. The dark side brings him moments of such absolute awareness that before he’s in front of his Master, he’s able to feel his approval. The Supreme Leader is probably the only one who has always understood him, better than anyone else.

Kylo knows that Hux wanted to present complaints to his Master. He doesn’t know what he planned to say, exactly, because, of course, he wasn’t paying that much attention, but he knows the General meant to express a lot of depictive elements about his character.

Hux doesn’t say a thing during the meeting.

At the end of a short discussion about the budget and contracts for the building of more ships, his Master assures him he knew Kylo would find the right planet for the weapon, and Hux tenses with some annoyance, and doubt.

“We don’t know if it’s the right one,” Hux says, and Kylo snorts in his direction.

“We will talk about this when the building of the Starkiller begins,” his Master says, unconcerned. “General, Lord Kylo Ren.”

And the meeting ends.

Kylo thinks that right and wrong depend, foremost, on who has the power to dictate them.

 

 

 

 

 

Hux watches him leave, his helmet looking recently polished, shining in the dim light. He vaguely remembers the blush that covered him from the physical effort; it seems so surreal now.

 

 

 

 

 

Darkness is perpetual, that’s a faultless reality. Beyond the suns that rotate, beyond the solar systems, space is black and limitless, an extension of darkness which can be sailed forever. Light comes and goes, is born and dies, but darkness is, and will be there after the suns and the Jedi die.

Kylo saw beyond right and wrong and started to think of power. It seemed evident that if right and wrong are taught, it is because someone has the power to define them. Right and wrong are a perspective. Power isn’t. Power legitimizes itself, exists to be recognized and acknowledged, just as darkness exists, embracing all under its rule.

Everything else is transitory, will perish. Nothing can stand in the way of the darkness, because it is irresistible, undeniable, it is laced with the Force forever. Even if the Force isn’t darkness alone, the Force is intertwined with  _ all _ .

There will always be the peace of closing one’s eyes, to become nothing, become all, the little darkness that takes us and bring us back.

The Force tells him the hyperdrive is functional again. He can hear the gastric flow of the technician who hasn’t had lunch yet, hurrying to finish installing the last program in the computer. By his side an officer is feeling nostalgic, looking at the black immensity of space extending before the ship.

Kylo opens his eyes, frowns, wonders why Hux can’t keep his hands out of his underwear. Having a single wall to separate them makes him impossible to ignore. His side hurts a little. Kylo slaps the wound gently to feel red under his tongue. Meditation helps him to heal faster, makes him more sensitive. Without focusing he can feel the sweat roll on RT-4052 and sting his eyes, he can feel the light pressure officer Gray applies to the buttons of the computer, he can feel Phasma hesitate in front of the cafeteria’s buffet. He can feel oxytocin surge free and drown Hux, who shakes in silence, shutting his eyes tight, wetting the sheet a little.

They jump to hyperspace for twenty seconds, and the cold increases. Kylo feels it. It burns. He knows where it comes from. It would be foolish to deny that he likes it.

 

 

 

 

 

Hux sees the perpetually snowed mountain ranges. The space is cold and that moon is surely no different. They tell him immediately that the atmosphere isn’t toxic. He commands the geologists to go down. Hux has studied his own blueprints many times and the moon’s size is adequate, at first glance at least. He asks for details of the average surface and core temperatures, watching as the TIE get closer to the planet.

The only thing that deters Hux from hoping this is the right location is that Ren found it first. He knows, he can picture his face, that it will be a triumph for Ren, another reason to taunt and dare, as if spying while Hux sleeps, eats, reads, and everything else isn’t enough. It’s like Ren wants to impose his childish dominance over everything around him.

Ren has never said anything, but Hux knows he’s  _ watching it all _ . It’s infinitely bothersome to feel under his supervision when Hux is the one writing reports about him every day.

Ren seems so sure of his  _ visions  _ that at the end of the shift Hux acknowledges himself beaten, trusts him to be right, finds himself thinking of the wound. Ren never asked any medical droid for treatment; Hux would have known.

Complete analysis would take seven shifts.

During the first, Hux asks the diameter of the planet seventeen times in complete stupefaction. Eighteen times he contemplates the calculations he presented as an ideal example for the project of the weapon, which are identical to the moon Kylo Ren found. Two hours after his shift is over he’s searching through the archives of the old Empire for all there is to know about the Jedi, the Sith, the Gray Jedi, the Ren Knights, and others known to be sensitive to the Force.

There isn’t much to discover. Much about the Jedi is censored; he tries to decrypt the information several times without success. About the Knights of Ren there’s a vague mention and a list of names he already knows. He pours another whisky, polishes his boots while looking at the blue hologram, and keeps wondering how is it possible that, in a Galaxy so vast, a grumpy and insufferable child was able to find a moon as wide and as cold as he thought, so many years ago, would be ideal. It seems to him – with all he’s read - that it’s misbegotten, that it has no logical foundation.

He concludes that the Force must be more than what those stiff definitions of the data base describe. Hux can’t navigate it, can’t control or perceive it, but he knows it’s more than that, because while he undresses, maybe drinking a little more than what he should, he feels a slight vibration in the air. It’s like an ultrasound he couldn’t hear, like something that weights in the ambient, like a stare behind his neck  _ and he knows.  _ Hux feels he understands the parts, but not what makes the all be the all.

He also knows that Ren is watching him, as always.

 

 

 

 

 

_ You’re the all _ . Since he found the planet his bond with the Force is even more pronounced. Kylo finds out in feverish emotion he’s stronger than ever. All, including the white storm obscuring the south pole of the moon, are within his reach. He’s able to assess in the frozen water drops of the surface a premonition. The destruction, the cries, the despair and the clenched teeth fill his chest. Within the Finalizer he can almost touch the hundreds of underground levels, as if it all were collapsed together and occupying the same space. He can hear the future splash of sweat from FN-2000 that will stain the training complex close to the mountain range. He can hear the howling of a canine. He can see fierce teeth, the Force swirling blue over that mouth, over those green eyes that have seen desert and ruin.

Kylo opens his eyes because he feels so much pain it almost knocks him down. He sits to meditate, pressing a hand unconsciously over the wound and strangely enough notices that the pain doesn’t come from the side where he was wounded earlier, but from the other. He can feel vividly a stab wound that goes straight through him, and at the same time an emotion he cannot translate climbs from his chest to his throat. It is so powerful it physically shakes him, side to side, and fills his eyes with tears.

_ Oh _ , he tries to regain his posture, breathes inside the mask and tries to turn the sudden sadness in anger, hate, something to take power from.  _ Oh _ , it is hard, he destabilizes, fills with anxiety, doubt, he doesn’t know what is happening.  _ What is this _ ? Kylo closes his eyes and sees brown skin, blue shining through the trees, and snow, his mouth is filled with a metallic taste, blood, a familiar flavor. Kylo shakes his head, hits himself in the thighs trying to regain his equilibrium, and growls, closes his eyes, howls.

Sometimes he gets the sensation that he sees too much to comprehend. He’s often thought that before he felt Hux in the ship he was already cold. He had seen the frozen peaks but he hadn’t known how to interpret them. He feels something getting away from him. The Force gives him vertigo, he’s in discomfort and on edge, as if  _ something were about to happen _ at any moment without him being able to do anything about it, without being able to prepare himself for it. It makes him angry, so much so that his anger consumes it all, his body is a shell and the Force embraces him in an immense tempest.

Kylo finally is able to meditate.

 

 

 

 

 

Hux reads, marvels, that those sensitive to the Force assemble their own lightsabers.

Hux imagines the frown, black locks on a sweat-sheened forehead, the red reflection, the freckles.

 

 

 

 

 

Eighty-four meters below him, FN-2000 is already sweating. Kylo notes with irritation that the stromtroopers are human to the point of experiencing such desires. FN-5093 lies underneath the other and they both move in a swing that crashes, trembles. Kylo disregards it, focuses on something else. If meat has instincts he can crush them, turn them into strength, alter them into something useful.

He gets hard under the robe, the cloth grazes his sensitive skin, pressure bends him and it’s tedious because he has to stretch his legs. Kylo breathes deep, to cure a laceration with meditation is possible, to ease down a boner is easy. He rarely gives in to the temptation beyond the necessary. He breathes deep.

Hux is drunk and in his underwear. He finished reading everything there was in the archives. Kylo notices because it’s more complicated to focus on not noticing. He breathes again. Hux walks towards his bed. Kylo orders his body to redirect the blood. Hux caresses himself over his pants, teases with his fingers at the head. Hux feels lust, and to his discomfort Kylo does as well. He dismisses it again as he’s done since he trained to be a Jedi and then he stops.

Kylo Ren is no Jedi, it’s been a long time since he even pretended to be one.

He allows himself to be curious, gives in. And it’s not good or bad; it just is. He opens his robe enough to slip in a hand. He wraps his fingers, twists his wrist clumsily. Wonders if it would be more stimulating to do it without the gloves he’s wearing, wonders if he’s going to get anywhere with what he’s is doing. For moments he feels red, hot. For moments.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not as if Hux hadn’t felt it before, that he’s there just beyond the corner of his eye, black and unsettling. He’s touched himself with his hair standing up a couple times and at the end is easy because it seems to be an intention of mutual indifference, so he keeps going. He’s drunk and he  _ knows  _ he’s found the place to build his  _ beauty _ . It’s something like the best day he’s had in years. He feels himself smooth inside his hand; the pressure is rehearsed, makes him moan with no air, makes him frown.

It’s when he’s getting close that he really notices. It’s been progressive. At the beginning he barely felt it, but now he’s sure Ren’s here. Ren sometimes is a wall or a table, Hux doesn’t know how, it makes no sense, but he’s had the feeling that his presence is stronger in certain things, he doesn’t know if Ren pretends it to or not. He’s close, it feels good, so he goes back to the warm thought of that girl, no name, no story, her mouth open, and heat. He cannot help but be enthusiastic and thrust with his hips, good, so good that his shadow gets darker.

To be drunk is easy. One functions faster and uncontained. Hux knows he’s about to come, but he’s not there yet, he’s flirting with the moment, sliding his hand, pure friction, clarity behind his eyelids, not light. He sees dark and nothing more, but it’s a familiar darkness. He tightens his jaw by reflex because he’s  _ close _ , it almost hurts, and it’s almost too much. He feels a weight on his shoulders, on his forehead, on his skin, he touches himself faster. And stops.

Opens his eyes, can’t see it but can  _ feel it, goddamn it what the hell? _

“Ren” he says out loud. He feels a shiver down his back. Suddenly he isn’t as close to finishing, he can feel Ren around him as if he were floating in the air. “Stop doing this, fuck off,” he says, and the air is different, it tastes burnt. He’s still hard, he touches himself, he never felt with Ren what he’s feeling now. It’s disturbing.

But he’s drunk, uninhibited, he will deny it later. He thinks of loose hair, closed eyes. Repremands himself for thinking it but goes on, tenses inside his hand. Hux gasps, thrusts, he can picture him blushing, frowning.

Opens his eyes, the three framed diplomas that accredit his promotions in the First Order are hanging in the wall, above his bed, and they seem to tremble. Hux ignores them, looks down and sees himself red, pink, white. He moans low. Imagines it clearly. Ren with half open eyes, dark wet eyes, looking at him while having him inside his mouth, the locks of hair graze his face. He pulls him close, until he has it all inside that heat, inside that mouth that licks him choking a little, and he can see the freckles under the blush, two over his eyebrow, over his nose, close to his lips.

He comes, moaning out loud.

And regrets it immediately, still warm where he just came.

The Force, because it can’t be anything else, revolves. There’s a sound that’s there just for a second, but it is a confirmation. Hux was looking but maybe he wasn’t seeing it: the three frames of his diplomas break when he’s still trembling; the crystal pours like water over him and his bed, his diplomas wave in the air.

Hux is sure he prefers the indifference.

 

 

 

 

 

When his shift begins, one of the suns that lights the moon can be seen on the horizon from the bridge in the Finalizer. It turns out the planet couldn’t have been better if they had it made to measure. It has more kyber crystals in its core than what Hux estimated optimistically. He reads the studies three times, and it doesn’t take him by surprise.

They will build his assassin of stars.

 


	3. The death of the coyote woman I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello from the dark, I'm back.
> 
> This is where I start to get intense with this, by that I mean that violence and controversial politics happens. I'll just say that not because Hux is the way he is I agree with him, but I like him so really tried to be fair to his beliefs. There's also heterosexual sex ahead, but that's not bad aside from my writing.
> 
> I want to thank again UP2L8 again for the beta work, all of you who commented and gave me kudos. All the best.
> 
> Kylo, meditation and me are three, the title of this chapter (and the next) are based directly on ["The Death of the Coyote Woman"](https://youtu.be/W66td1l_ISQ), I also recommend ["The Marriage of the Coyote Woman"](https://youtu.be/09RbGsUkRIc) and everything from ["Lighting at the Door"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZc5-w5_fv8&list=PL8a8cutYP7fp0ebUrhCb2LXp5vicOkXQl), first album by All Them Witches. That's Kylo Ren music, I'll bring more later.
> 
> Don't run away from anger, learn from it, so it won't rule you.  
> Waiting for you all in the dark side. 
> 
> Yo-ho.

**The death of the coyote woman I.**

 

 

“Except for power, everything is illusion”

N.R.

 

 

There are more tests to run yet, but the construction of the workers complex is imminent. If adjustments are needed Hux could modify any part of his blueprints in his sleep and trust the math to be correct.

During the tenth cycle after arriving at the moon they descend to the surface. The cold bites his cheeks as Hux walks in the snow and thinks he can imagine the red thunderbolts destroying his enemies. The cold he feels envelopes him. With satisfaction he orders the computer to initiate a hard drive for the information on Starkiller Base.

Between seven thousand construction engineers and hundreds of droids, the construction of a provisional complex is fast. Hux spends four hours in an improvised conference room with architects, engineers, technicians, and military chiefs, laying out plan after plan with detailed explanations. At the end he thinks they’ll be ready to initiate the main excavation when the tectonic plate study indicates the optimum site.

Everything goes as planned until he walks out the meeting room and a stormtrooper approaches him. His hold on his blaster is tense. Hux can’t see his face but he knows his men so well he frowns immediately.

“Where’s Ren?” Hux asks, anticipating the problem.

The solider answers him in a torrent that the Lord ventured among the trees a couple hours ago and that all troopers that went looking for him returned after losing his tracks. Hux massages the bridge of his nose. For a brief moment he wishes Ren would get lost and never return.

But the truth is that if he closes his eyes he can _feel him_ there in the back of his head, faint, dark.

It takes almost three hours to find him. Hux has to order a provisional satellite launch, sends droids in twenty three different search patterns, and in the end they find him. He stands very still in among the trees. The drifting snow has long filled his tracks behind him, as if he hadn’t moved a step since he arrived hours ago. Hux gets aboard a speeder bike with growing annoyance.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s staring above; the snowflakes fall on his masks to melt after a moment. Hux doesn’t know his mood, but he feels so much anger that he’s surprised everything is intact.

“What are you doing here?” he asks with irritation, getting closer.

Ren turns towards him, pointing up with his arm. “It will be here,” he says.

“What?” Hux asks with skepticism.

“The main cannon,” he says dryly.

Hux would laugh, _for real Ren?_ , because to know the optimum location of the main cannon you would have to be sure about the location of the engines that will give propulsion to the moon to make it movable, and for that you would have to know where the energy generators would be, and to know that you’d have to know where the storage… Hux frowns. Ren is breathing heavier. Hux has the sensation he’s been especially angry for days.

“Will it be right here?” Hux asks reluctantly, because doubting after all of Ren’s correct predictions would be unprofessional. His scorn is just personal.

Ren seems to relax, and he nods. “We’re not alone on this moon, General” he says walking to the speeder.

 

 

 

 

 

When he’s returning to the Finalizer that night, Hux wonders if Ren can get inside his head without him realizing. It angers him even more.

 

 

 

 

 

The days on the moon are a bit longer that the standard cycle, but Kylo Ren adapts quickly. He avoids the surface of the planet as much as he can, though, by meditation and physically. When he’s down there he feels his face in flames, as if he had it cut in half; he feels a pain in his side that splits him open, an emptiness in the chest that weakens him. It infuriates him to feel diminished by something he can’t understand and that not long ago gave him strength.

Anger catches him in the hallways, anger catches him at minor things.

When he destroys the table of his room in a fit of anger because lunch is soup instead of fruit, he feels his Master’s eye on the back of his neck, and air doesn’t get to his lungs.

Will it be possible to avoid this feeling by killing something? Is it because he’s about to kill something? What is it that is bothering him, then?

Kylo has no trouble with darkness, to say, he doesn’t have to turn on the lights when he walks into his room and the gloom bathes him with its absolute blackness. In the complete absence of light Kylo can focus better, meditation gets easier, his eyes go beyond because his senses are excited, the Force is with him, is his ally.

When he’s eating, no lights on, in front of Darth Vader’s ashes, one idea gets to him. What if there isn’t complete darkness? What if the natural state is light and darkness is just the measure of its absence?

Kylo is closer to emotion than most, he knows. Homesickness takes him by surprise, fills him. But the problem isn’t the homesickness; the problem is the doubt. That surely is the worst emotion of all, if that doubt refers to the supremacy of darkness, the path he decided to take. Kylo breathes in, swallows the fruit they got for him as consequence of his anger. He has a tornado inside him.

He shakes. Even the longest-lived star, even the center of the Galaxy, will expire one day. But the immense darkness that keeps all rotating, that keeps solar systems rotating, planets and their moons rotating, that keeps civilizations and their enemies rotating, life and death, the atom always separate one from the other, immense, divine, will be there when all expires. Darkness will allow life and consciousness.

Kylo keeps his eyes on Darth Vader’s ashes, even in the dark. Somehow they always bring him answers.

 

 

 

 

 

Hux doesn’t ask to reconfirm the analysis.

Not because he doesn’t want to but because he knows Ren is _there_ , between the dust and the emptiness.

What Ren said turns out to be true, about not being alone on the moon, because scans detect life forms taking refuge in the caverns deep in the forests. Hux sits in his command chair (the rotating chair of his room, actually), asks the computer for his math spreadsheet, and with resignation does the calculations. The computer warns him they will destroy thousands of hectares of forest and Hux wrinkles his forehead.

“How much is that forest worth compared to the universe?”

The computer starts to enumerate an infinite decimal percentage. It starts with over a thousand zeros.

Hux laughs. “Send the coordinates to all high ranks. The excavations should begin as soon as possible.”

Before going to sleep he sends three droids to the caverns.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo wakes up because the Force beats with singular ferocity. There are over seventy thousand life forms vibrating with anticipation, formed and anxious. He vaguely wonders about the reunion about to summon the entire Finalizer crew.

 

 

 

 

 

“Heirs of the universe.”

Hux blinks slow, pauses and opens his eyes. This is his first speech for the whole Finalizer crew. He’s done it before in front of similar audiences, has studied all the good speakers, knows about passion. The troopers maintain their rows, the officers stand in their dress uniforms, pressed and clean.

“We, the ones who understand the course of life and death, gather today.” His voice echoes in the cold and extensive rows. “I have felt in all of you the shadow of doubt, the insecurity before the apparent immensity of the Republic.” He breaths in, believes he feels Ren swarming around him. “But work with the knowledge that the truth will win in the end. I know all of you have wondered if the weight of being worthy of ruling the Galaxy is a weight we can bear.” The white extends beyond what his eyes can see, the plain is beautiful and immeasurable.

“Children of the universe,” he says, “you are the worthiest and the strongest, the wisest,” there’s a heat wave rising. “Do not think of our untiring effort to bring order as a waste; to consider yourself small will not change the Galaxy.” Hux vibrates, emotion evolving him. “We are destined to rule, comrades, brothers and sisters, First Order, family!” The troopers hold their guns tighter, the officers lift their chins. “Do not feel you have to lower your head to those ignorant of the truth you well know. Order, our force is not just one of us but each and every one of us!”

There’s a common cheer. Hux gives them the moment, and then interrupts.

“Today we impose our power, and the whole Galaxy will witness our greatness. Today we’ll be sure, all of us, of our imminent success!” Hux breathes in, a sea of sensation rushing through him, “Our power will free the Galaxy of the oppression that deceives. We will murder the stars and truth will shine brighter than any sun. We will free the oppressed like the Empire did before us. We will return to the glorious days of order and control!”

After the outbreak Hux breathes against the microphone and silence lands like a cloak over his audience. “We are not inadequate. You stand upon the weapon that will bring harmony to the Galaxy. Today begins the end of the new and deplorable Republic. Our conscience they will fear, our numbers will multiply, and with the death of our atrocious oppressors, the glory we long for will come!”

 

 

 

 

 

Hux barely had to present his plans that morning; the Supreme Leader approved them immediately.

Ships, full of musicians, alcohol, whores, and paid mercenaries to fight trooper or officers in desire of conflict arrive at Starkiller base. Hux sees them jump out of hyperspace twenty minutes after finalizing the speech and feels ease for his men. All will be satisfied: the thirst, the lust, the anger.

 

 

 

 

Kylo has to admit the emotional weight of the speech has _certain_ effect on the troops. For him, beautiful words aren’t needed. He understands darkness and the absolute truth of what that means with no need for poetic quotes with rehearsed precision. He doesn’t need Hux words to be sure. But the Force tells him, laced with a hundred thousand creatures that embrace the construction of the Starkiller, that the mood of the whole crew is renewed. The ones touched by uncertainty are few.

Kylo, _you are the crowd._

Perhaps if warm light didn’t linger inside him with its infuriating shine, he wouldn’t notice the few troopers and officials, that like him, can’t help but be perturbed by the illumination, the sharp doubt.

He tells to himself that it’s providence of the same Force to plant doubt. Who wouldn’t need to prove himself but the strong, to make greater his resistance and become even more superior and worthy of his strength?

Kylo rests in his bed. He feels this is a good moment to meditate. His body is a temporal limitation before the embrace of the Force, that his ally always receives him in its giant transit, allows him to move among the thousands that drink, talk, and flutter. For so long, he doesn’t know how long, he becomes the mountain’s slope where the dispersal party announces the arrival of the extinguisher of futile lives.

There is a clear disturbance in the Force.

 

 

 

 

 

It is more his duty than his intention; Hux must spend time with his men. It is strategic on his behalf, makes them trust him; it’s good to be seen celebrating with the troops from time to time. And it isn’t like Hux doesn’t want to celebrate. The truth is that each glass is better than the one before. It’s just that he feels like there’s something unresolved, something rolling up in its place. He remembers the vibration of the lightsaber, can almost hear it if he focuses, swallows the drink without tasting and wonders what is bothering Ren so much that even Hux, who hates him, is obliged to notice the intensity of his trepidation.

Hux finds him pretentious. It is not like any of the hundred thousand present ignore that Ren is the Master of the Knights that serve the Leader Snoke. There’s no need for him to spread his bad attitude like fleas in the air as a demonstration of power. Hux asks for another drink, looks around. Un-masked troopers, officials, Phasma, the droids; everyone seems amused, and though the music is a little loud for his taste, he accommodates with a shift in his chair and drinks his sixth whisky.

This one seems like a night where people make mistakes. Hux expects them not to be severe, because that girl with a false Coruscant accent is looking straight at him, and she has to know he isn’t ignoring her. Sometimes it is good for the troops to see that even if he sits in the same table as them, he’s _above the table_. He gestures for the girl to come and she ignores the three troopers that look almost identical that try to catch her. She stands up and walks towards him with fixed eyes.

“Anjing Hutan,” he says.

He thinks it is a pretty name for a whore. The octave glass is empty in front him and she smiles. Her fangs are a little longer than usual; she seems canine. She’s a thin girl, her hair is mussed and she’s cute. Hux decides he fancies her.

“I have a doubt, General” she says, drawling that accent she doesn’t need; Hux knows she must come from Tatooine, or any planet occupied by Hutts. “The identical boys from the other table were talking space laws. They said that a solar system with no intelligent life is like a sea that belongs to no one.” She narrows her eyes, “Why would they say that?”

Hux laughs, assumes that this is how she gets to be taken to bed; by looking innocent. It’s so obvious that it’s cute. He answers that what happens to an ocean that is unclaimed territory is similar to what happens to space in general. Nothing belongs to nobody. Ships travel the seas and the universe knowing that sooner or later there will be trouble.

“The sea and the space are sailed,” the girl says, head tilted. “Does that make you a sailor, General?”

Hux drinks the ninth glass with sudden interest. “I suppose so, Anjing.”

“I’ve never met a sailor like you before.”

 

 

 

 

 

It’s still a good line when she’s melting in bed.

She was very pretty dressed and a lot prettier naked, her hair messed on the covers, her tits reddish because she squeezes them in her fingers, and her thighs a little wet because she drips. Hux pulls his fingers out and see his glove soaked. She doesn’t close her legs and he undoes two buttons on his jacket, notices he’s hot under the collar.

He turns her around and she lifts her ass, so hungry, the curve of her back is delicious, to lick her and bite her and die inside her. The best part is that he’s drunk, everything works. Her hair covers her face and she moves her ass in anticipation, she has spank prints and Hux decides to not take off the gloves. As it is, he won’t take off anything.

She grinds against him, with the condom in her hand as she does it, like drawing circles with her ass, and he can see her there, all tight, can feel her warm over the cloth, fantastic, so he gives in, holds her with one hand on the curve of her back.

He’s laughing a little, and he moves, doesn’t even wonder about what he’s feeling in the back of his head, what makes his hair stand on end, ignores it, almost.

She lets herself be held by the hair a little rougher than necessary, looks back at him with wild animal eyes when she feels him. Hux puts the condom on.

“My ancestors were coyotes, sailor.”

To Hux it doesn’t matter; he feels pressure on his forehead and then on his dick and then he’s inside and it feels like everything trembles a little. He wonders if it’s his imagination that when he fucks her hard until she screams, the windows shake, the table shakes, the bed shakes; but maybe is just her pushing him inside until everything is heat and friction, maybe is the whisky, this moon, whatever.

Hux stops to push his fingers inside from behind her. She fucks herself, in circles, coming and going, she says she feels full. Her hair swirls and everything spins a little. Hux murmurs drunken words.

What he likes best is her hair, he decides. It’s black and wavy, and it almost reaches her flexed arms. Hux sinks himself inside her ass, _uhm_ , she moans. Hux holds her by her hair and fucks her so hard he has to stop and pull out a moment because he comes. She kicks around when he pushes in again and _hell, baby, you’re so pretty._

He wants to see her falling apart and crying while she comes because he wonders what she looks like while she does, so he touches her with his other hand, and she howls and tightens the covers in her sweaty hands. Hux hadn’t thought she smelled good, but she does, to bad things.

And she does come, and it has to be for real, he thinks, because she trembles for head to toe and tightens inside her ass as if to kill him. Hux stops touching her and Anjing screams a little, cries a little, and out of her an orgasms sprouts, it wins him over, he feels his pants get wet and sees her spasming and trembling. Hux doesn’t have to fuck her much longer, holds her hair tight, thrusts once, twice, thrice and remembers Kylo Ren’s black wavy hair, sees her arched and submitted, and comes. He might have touched her at the end to ground himself, he doesn’t admit from what, he comes so hard he almost falls asleep afterwards.

He hadn’t fucked in months. When he lays beside her and sees her sleep he wonders why things are still shaking and curses out loud.

“Go away, fucker,” he growls.

Ren doesn’t go. Hux wonders again what makes him burn with such fury. Sometimes he himself feels he could strike against everything he sees and destroy the room with blaster fire.

 

 

 

 

 

There’s pleasure, bliss, in the air.

It’s vain. Kylo watches them condescendingly, finds their amusement superfluous. Out of the tents medical droids flutter agitatedly among the passed out drunks and those who throw up for hours on the border of the forest where they think they can’t be seen. Kylo feels himself echo in the wind that flows with the breathing, with the air that detaches from the mountain, with the top of the trees that sway. He’s upset. He’s not sure where it comes from. But it doesn’t allow him to rest. If the snow trembles it doesn’t matter. If the glasses in the bar twinkle nobody is looking. If the windows beat with his presence then that’s his bad. He won’t stop. There’s something that just doesn’t feel the _good kind_ of wrong.

He looks for it camouflaged in everything measured by the Force. _You’re water and you’re frozen with millions of snowflakes_ . FX-8907 passes by with a girl on his shoulders and FN-5093 in his hand. The three of them are drunk and Kylo submerges in the emptying bottles. He feels himself slip down the throat of the Florrum kids who came to perform a juggling act. He feels himself pouring into Hux’ tenth drink of the night and feels that if he were able to stretch his sensitivity he’d see the thing, the _problem_ , right in front of him, but the fountain of the perturbation runs away from him, spills through his fingers like sand.

The earth is cold and firm, black, deep, covered by snow. He feels the steps of a hundred thousand people in the provisional tents that were put up for the celebration, hears every foot drag, feels the dry fall of the four troopers, one drunker than the other, laying outside the food section. He’s right there when the girl drops her clothes in front of Hux. He’s at the top of the mountain, solitary in the dark, witnessing the stars without opening his eyes. She moans on Hux’ bed and Kylo snarls, frustrated, _where is it, what is it._

He finds himself burning, in the twenty-three fireplaces that provide warmth to the tents and between the hot air everyone exhales with the breath of alcohol. He feels like a furious flame that ignites and consumes everything around it like dry wood. Time curves, space folds and Kylo is heat and aggression. He can smell restless sweating, can feel FN-3479, can feel his desire under his skin and it burns, like indomitable fire; sees her, devastating from Hux’ eyes, and everything is red. He can hear her, he invades her with the combustion of his hate and finds her made of fire and ash. Hux fucks her with haste, her thoughts spilling and sparkling the Force like water on hot oil. Kylo sees it so clear and firm while she comes that it’s almost intimate, _you’re the coyote woman and you give in_. He stands up too fast, sees black for a moment, and sees red behind his eyes when he shuts them tight.

Anger covers him like a soft blanket that the Force gives him. The radial of hatred is like a storm, a hurricane, an earthquake, a forest fire. He is in his room and could go down to the fucking moon right now but his mouth tastes bitter and he thinks of her and the smell of silky hair and disgust overwhelms him. He lights his saber blind of courage. It’s his own room, but he lashes out all the same, no pity.

It’s so much fury that when he calms down, he’s sitting in the middle of the disaster, thinking of betrayal. He can taste death if he focuses. He can taste her sweat if he wishes. Breaths out, boils.

Hux was thinking of him, Kylo knows. Even if the girl was thinking about Hux, FN-3479 was thinking about the girl and Kylo was thinking about the trooper.

He stands up, destroys the armored door of his room with erratic strikes.

 

 

 

 

 

Anjing wakes up two and a half hours later. Hux had enough time for two drinks and a shower. He threw his entire uniform into the trash and dressed again. He already ordered some food for the whisky discomfort and is lighting up a cigarette while sitting on the end of the bed to see her wallow in the sheets. She brushed the hair back from her face before talking to him.

“So I’m an important whore,” she says with a ruffian smile, and he takes another puff.

“Why would you say that?” he asks amused. Her chest is uncovered and her round tits bristle with the cold. Hux can see one of her nipples get hard. She looks delicious and he already fucked her.

“The three identical boys talked last night about lots of things, General,” she says while stretching. “They say the First Order will turn this whole planet into a super weapon that will give you the power to rule the Galaxy.” She seems enchanted with the idea.

Hux laughs.

He feels pity for her. She’s quite pretty with her fierce teeth, and he thinks she wasn’t bad. He thinks of her name again and gives her the doubtable honor of being the best company he’s had in months. _Anjing Hutan was not bad, not bad at all._

“You have to leave, darling,” he says, most of all because he doesn’t want to meet her anymore, and she looks at him pleased, biting her lip.

“Do you have to save the Galaxy already, sailor? Can’t you have me a little more?”

Hux leans on one arm and refuses without grief, orders the computer something she doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t insist again, doesn’t stop smiling. She stands up and with soft sensuality she puts on piece by piece everything she dropped to the floor. She takes her bag at the end, turns to look at him and musses her hair behind her ear. Hux sees her so alive and so beautiful, breathing slowly and being a flirt even when she knows he doesn’t want her.

She smiles the last time and says goodbye with a sigh, walking to the exit. Hux feels the ambient dense and dark. The gun weights heavy in his hand when he sees her hips swaying, her hair over her shoulders. She’s almost in front of the door and the curve of her back is evident under the little top she’s wearing. He feels pity again, more faintly. He points at her, takes a drag of the cigarette.

Shoots her. Exhales. It doesn’t hurt.

He feels a quake under his skin and the door of his room opens before she starts falling. Ren is on the other side. He’s bringing a trooper with him.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo can see and feel the life abandoning her, in her brown eyes there’s nothing, and between them there’s a blaster wound. She falls gracelessly and Kylo shudders a little upon the wave in the Force caused by her death. It moves him. He can’t help but think it is a beautiful spectacle to watch her die.

 

 

 

 

 

Ren pushes the trooper and passes over the body of Anjing without looking back.

“FN-3479,” he says, “It’s him,” and he seems to vibrate, everything vibrates. “I promised my Master I wouldn’t kill the men either, but…”

He looks agitated, and he said _either. S_ o Ren also wanted to kill Hux and Supreme Leader had to make him promise not to. Hux smiles. The truth is that it’d be nice to shoot Ren right now.

“They are my men, don’t you mess with them Ren.”

Kylo lights his saber, the red reflects on the walls, the solider sweats cold without being able to stop looking at the dead girl on the floor. It seems he recognizes her. Hux remembers him; he was at the table with Anjing.

Ren holds the saber close to the trooper. “They are also my men, Hux. They take my orders as well.”

Hux wants to laugh at that. He gives the cigarette a last drag.

Phasma comes through the door. “I came as soon as possible, General,” she says with an unperturbed voice. She doesn’t seem surprised by the body or the lightsaber.

“Take him Phasma; he must remain in custody until I arrive.”

The trooper looks infinitely relieved. Hux thinks he should be afraid of her just as well, even though she isn’t impregnating her surroundings with piercing danger, huge aggression, hate. His head hurts. Hux thinks Ren is looking at him, so he looks back in silence while killing the stub in the ashtray on the table.

Ren doesn’t turn off his saber even when Phasma has left. The air is heavy on his shoulders, against his chest, his mouth tastes metallic.

“Leave me in peace, Ren,” says Hux, exasperated.

The truth is he’s curious to know how Ren discovered that the trooper he brought was the one that revealed a high military secret. How could he have identified him in so little time without being on the moon in the first place, because Ren was _in the Finalizer._

Is this the Force?

“Your men are weak and not to be trusted,” Ren says finally, and he sounds like he’s pacing in a cage.

Hux hates him so much in that moment, he hates him more than he’s hated him for intruding in his business, as if he has the right to watch him shit, eat, fuck. His blood boils.

“Your opinion means nothing to me,” Hux says. Ren snorts and Hux raises his voice. “The Supreme Leader is aware they are superior to droids. My men are devoted to our cause.”

Ren moves the sword close to his body. Hux doesn’t feel he has to explain anything to him, so he decides to ignore whatever he’s going to demand and Ren turns away his face, his mask is looking at the wall. He obviously wants to go out and murder half his regiment.

“FN-3479 is a traitor,” he grumbles, tightening the saber in his fist. “He’s only devoted to pointless desires, just like his superior.”

Too much air in those words.

Hux is taken by surprise, he hadn’t thought Ren would complain about him fucking. He knows he just did. His saber is still on.

He shoots him, the gun light in his fingers. He still feels drunk. It’s a little delicious.

Ren blocks it without turning to face him; the air is electric. Hux still points the gun at him. He shot with no thought, knowing he couldn’t hurt him. When he speaks he might as well be shooting with his voice.

“If it is true that the Force makes you feel so many things, then you should know that each of them, even the cloned ones, are different from each other.”

Ren turns to look in his direction. Hux tightens his grip on the gun but lowers it. Ren turns off the saber. It seems like an agreement, but the air is still heavy.

“If they doubt, they have me to make the truth clear for them,” Hux says. “If they make mistakes, I’m the one who corrects them. Now leave. Your presence isn’t necessary. I’ll solve the incident.”

For an instant Hux considers thanking Ren for finding the trooper so fast, but decides he won’t. He makes a hand gesture to dismiss him and Ren snorts inside his helmet.

“You cannot give orders to me,” he says angrily, and Hux’ eyes narrow.

“And you cannot change the orders given by the Supreme Leader. Do as you please.”

Ren leaves the room, passing above Anjing, two steps and he’s already out, as if he’s running away from a scolding. He lights up the saber just as he’s out; it sounds like an ominous tantrum. Hux can smell the plastic and the burned metal, can see the red sparks.

Hux feels he won this battle.

 

 

 

 

 

Before the medical droids arrive, Hux picks up what spilled from Anjing’s bag when she fell. He puts it all in the second drawer of his improvised closet, where he keeps his cigarettes and another blaster pistol.

 

 

 

 

 

He was drunk, both times, when those things happened.

Hux thinks of black hair and freckles, the freckles most of all. He can’t help but wonder what it means, and can’t help thinking that while he goes around it again and again with unease, Ren is probably watching. It bothers him so much. It embarrasses him.

Ren knows. He must know, of course.

In front of him is the glass panels of the bridge and he realizes he has given away way too much ground. Ren must be what causes him sudden discomfort, sudden anger; Hux tries not to think of him.

They inform him that the initial perforations have began. He watches through the window. They can’t start to build what Ren predicted yet, not because Hux doesn’t believe him – because, with each time more and each time less sympathy, he has to give credit to Ren’s faith - but because things have a specific order. You have to load the weapon in order to fire it. You have to drill in order to know if you’re in the right place or have to move a little south.

From the air he can see the heavy machinery begin its work. The troopers and officers look like ants from this height and Hux breathes deep. He’s thought about so many things lately.

What does power imply?

Every relationship is a power relationship. Every relation of power is a fear relation, a command relation, on a greater or lesser scale.

If an emperor imparts orders it is because he can trust others to follow his command. He had previously imposed dominance. He’s made clear that he is _above_ in some way. He has made it evident that without his guidance, all things would become uncertain, unsafe, unknown; and what is more frightening than the unknown?

Parents impose fear over their children throughout their lives, even if their intention is to love. If the child didn’t depend on their parents, if the child wasn’t aware that life without them would be chaos, if the child didn’t _fear,_ then parenthood wouldn’t make sense. No son or daughter would want to remain under pointless oppression. But as long as a child depends completely of their parents, for affection, money, social position, life would not feel just or reasonable; a child’s life is to be submissive to what their parents expect them to do and to be. When the child grows up and becomes independent, the fear is lost, the power relationship changes, dominance isn’t what it was about anymore.

Nevertheless, not every power relationship is an oppression based on somebody else’s fears. Power is also proof of mercy. Romantic love is a power relationship. Power is implicit in every emotional bond one creates. One has the power over it, one is submissive to that power, wanting it or not.

There’s no such thing as a power-free relationship. There may be balance in that power, harmony in its execution, but that means the related are equals or see each other as such. They are not equals because they consider each other worthy of respect, but because they are both equal in their capability of executing their power. One can recognize the equal right of a tree to remain alive, but that’s not having an equal relationship with it. A man can always cut down a tree; a tree can’t cut down a man.

Power is related to violence. To have more capacity for violence means more capacity for power. That’s why governments have armies, police forces, secret services for espionage, affiliated armed groups. The government of the Galaxy should be able to execute violence more than anybody, and it has to be an acceptable violence, or there will be revolutions, as always.

Hux watches with keen attention as the first explosive charges explode. The landslides are what they were expected to be, avalanches unleash distantly.

The government of the Galaxy must be in the hands of a respected leader, loved and feared by all. The ones directly under his command should consider each other equals, but they should not consider the emperor an equal or else they will try to topple him. A prime example of this is the current Republic with their mediocre democracy of ignorant representatives from ignorant cultures, representatives than shouldn’t be treated as equal by the others, relationships of power tainted by those who should be oppressed for their own benefit.

Power is necessary because mercy is necessary. Without it and without the ideal of a sustainable life for everyone, the weak would be condemned to extinction at the hands of the strong. Life would be an eternal, infinite fight, without agreement and equality of terms, without respect.

That’s why a shepherd is needed, a guide who sees clearly the disadvantage of life forms with less development. One who would establish order, control of violence, so everyone would be free to develop, within the boundaries of the mistakes other more advanced civilizations have made. Mercy is beautiful. It means help, support, superiority.

Hux contemplates with cold ease the assessment of his math, breathes deep. He would be a merciful leader.

 

 

 

 

 

One of the three droids comes back from the caverns. It contains videos of a life form Hux never saw before.

  



	4. The death of the coyote woman II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a beautiful full moon night, I came with torture and explicit sex again, so good to be back.
> 
> I'm almost done, one chapter to translate and that'll be it, I hope to publish a little faster since we're halfway through but we'll see how the Force goes. 
> 
> Again I want to say thanks to my beta UP2L8, who's amazing help has given a much better shape to my translations, I'm constantly learning vocabulary and fighting with language because sometimes I have to look for words I already know because I momentary forget, but well, it's been fun. 
> 
> Since Kylo, meditation and me are three, I've come with more Ren music for you people, this is a special one, I get the chills a little with it, it's called [Meditation Before the Kill](https://youtu.be/LQbd6JaBkuI=) and it's an instrumental piece (the only one of the band), it's acoustic, but it was composed by Inquisition, a colombian Black Metal band. Dark stuff, made me think a lot about the feeling of this thing I wrote here. Give it a listen, it's probably not what you think.
> 
> Thanks again to all of you who wrote comments and gave me kudos, cheers. 
> 
> See you in the dark side.
> 
> Every time Hux drinks I drank twice, yo-ho.

**The death of the coyote woman II**

 

 

“One must remain terrified of becoming terrifying.”

KB.

 

 

Kylo isn’t comfortable on the moon, definitely, but he has to conquer it, recycle all the pain that floods him and turn it into strength. So he forces himself to remain on the surface and, in the measure of possibility, to help with the construction.

 _Nobody_ has to know he can’t go back to the Finalizer because his room is destroyed. He personally threatened the technicians and the guard troopers so Hux in particular wouldn’t know. _Nobody_ contradicts him either, when he states - after hours of meditation - where everything will be built, though Hux always stares with his condescending eyes and his meticulously arranged hair.

He’s been at the edge of murder so many times it itches, burns, he feels withdrawal.

However, here, in the improvised room arranged for him when he harshly stated he’d spend the night on the moon; here, alone and sheltered by the Force to shy the cold away, Kylo can recognize himself. His training has prepared him to face sparkling doubts, weaknesses. He draws a circle with his shoulders, lets his head roll back, feels supremely angry. He could strike again against any obstacle in his way. But he’s not angry about the reckless trooper, or because everyone ignores him when he points with confident precision where the rooms, cannon, shitholes, showers, and dining rooms will be. No, it’s not that. That’s just a part of it.

Kylo stretches his arms in front of him, reaches for the dark and fluent trail that Darth Vader’s ashes transmit in the Force. It is tattooed on the depth of his spirit. And he admits to himself in crystalline pain that his rage comes from the temptation of the light.

He’s tried so hard to deny that he’s thought about Chewbacca so much that it comes almost naturally. The problem is that Kylo, amid his darkness, can see light disturbing comfortable gloom. Moreover, light moves him, fills his chest with anxieties and regrets that he won’t stop to meditate into because they are vain, mundane, ephemeral. But it’s almost impossible. It takes so much not let himself be overtaken by sentiment that he finds himself about to cry anyway, about to scream, about to ask for help, to regret everything.

There’s no point denying light exists, but it’s a mistake to think of it as superior to darkness, for obvious reasons.

This very same moon he’s standing on, with two suns setting on the horizon, has more dark places than places kissed by the light. The light touches all that’s obvious, but the depths are black, delicious. Kylo closes his eyes hard. His own reasoning has made him conclude that this is the natural order of things: the light is there, evident to the delusory senses, upon the one blinded by its brightness, the one who cannot locate himself in the vast divine immensity of the complete darkness, which holds the light within.

But light is a blink.

He breathes in. Ben Solo’s family, mother, father, uncles, are the main source of light and doubt inside him, even if he refuses it, even if he’s been fighting against it half his life. Bitterly he hates them for hindering his way to balance, hates them for his ignorance and for being unable to understand darkness in no uncertain terms.

He hates them because they make him doubt.

He hates them because they make him suffer.

He’s furious.

 

 

 

 

 

In three hours time Hux discovers with impassive facade that Ren was right even in predicting the pathetic.  With his mask and disturbing voice, he said with the utmost seriousness that the rooms the troopers will use to hide and have sex in would be at the end of the northernmost hallway, where the forest is thickest. Hux scans the map with unease but can’t deny it. It all easily fits.

 _Bastard_ , he thinks with mortification.

Hux asks himself with absolute grumbling if he should thank him for whatever he does that allows him to pinpoint at things that haven’t even happened yet as if they were old stories to him. He doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to face him and feel he owes something to that mechanical sound of breath, in front of that caged voice and that suffocating sensation that intensifies with the brutality of his anger or his mere closeness.

McBrian calls him and the computer plays the official announcement. Hux stretches, takes three long draws from his cigarette, and hears the description with sudden interest.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo knew about them so long ago when he was _snow, white and soft_. The steps of the savage crew do not surprise him in the least. He comes out of his room and Hux is in the hall as well, walking towards the command center.

“Today we will test the prototype of our Starkiller,” Hux says when they are even. “This will be interesting. They’ve been surrounding us for little more than an hour now. We’ll give them a surprise.”

Kylo finds he has nothing to say. If Hux plans to kill all the coyotes then that’s fine with him. The trace in the Force he senses doesn’t make him think they are dealing with an advanced society.

“Are they some kind of canis lupus?”

McBride stops talking when he sees them cross the threshold. He looks straight at Hux when he says, “The cannons are in position, sir.”

Hux nods. “Do we have visuals from the ship?”

“Yes sir.”

They project the images of four holograms. McBride assures him they will be able to monitor the shots and the sub-hyperspace jump perfectly. Kylo doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s been curious about this ever since he read about it in the plans. It might even be what first made him think the Force can be reason and not only awareness.

“Record everything. I’ll want to watch it later. Wait for my signal to fire.” Hux turns on his heels, seems particularly excited.

Kylo can feel his swirl of anxiousness and almost amusement in the Force. When he sees Hux leave the command center he wonders briefly if he should follow him, so he does. It causes even more curiosity that Hux is ordering a team of five troopers to head for the north exit of the complex.

“The biggest garrison is closest to the west exit,” Kylo says after Hux sends the five troopers to hide on the irregularities of the field.

Kylo can see them with their white uniforms, the Force beating with advance. He can almost feel the imminent death. Hux leans on the rail of the provisional terrace, his stare fixed on the white horizon.

“The leader is with this group. The satellite images confirm a peculiar formation approaching. They seem to be bringing primitive catapults”.

Kylo doesn’t ask questions. Most of all because he can feel on his skin the heavy drag of the wooden wheels that carry each catapult. Days ago he identified the leader, singling her out from the others. She’s sitting, and by what the Force reveals, oh, she is so scared.

Kylo doesn’t feel compassion for her. The truth is he expected Hux to pretend to find out first if they were linked to the Republic, or if they could be used as a workforce, but Hux is beaming, so sure of himself. Kylo looks at him and thinks him fragile.

Then, “Let them fire first,” he says to the communicator. “Return fire on my signal.”

The rocks they throw crash clumsily against the base’s shield and Hux rotates his shoulders back, breaths deep.

“Fire,” he says.

It isn’t one shot, it’s eighty-two shots at the same time. Kylo feels them all in a place in the Force he wasn’t expecting. It puzzles him. He looks around. In the Force he can know what happens in seconds. The red bolts shear through space, rapid, furious, terrible. Kylo wonders what it is that strangles him when it happens.

There’s almost a second where there’s nothing. None of the cannon shots are in the air and Kylo doesn’t know where it comes from, where it is.

But the aftershock comes back in an instant, in between the mountains, kilometers beyond, the blast is immediate. Kylo can feel them die, so many, so quickly, graceless most of them, some without even noticing. It fills his guts with fury. When he turns around to Hux he doesn’t find him so fragile anymore, and he doesn’t approve of it.

“Reason,” Kylo says, making Hux turn around, the light of the explosions shining on the white skin of his forehead. “Reason is useful. The Force is related to it, with the connection of all things in general.” Hux frowns with annoyance. “But reason alone isn’t superior to the awareness of the Force. It is but one expression of the Force. The power of those cannons isn’t anything compared to the immensity o-

“Shut up Ren.”

It’s so obvious, Hux thinks. Ren is angry because he doesn’t understand how the cannons work and now he wants to make it clear that he’s far stronger because of the Force, with more eternal babbling about his faith in the dark side. Hux stops him before he starts talking about Darth Vader again, even though Ren becomes thick around him, as if he could suffocate Hux with a look -which is possible, Hux knows.

“It’s foolish to berate me, an ally, simply because you can’t understand how I did it.”

Kylo breaths in, hearing him from inside his mind.

Hux doesn’t let him speak. “Save your anger for the necessary. You don’t know what the sub-hyperspace is. Figure it out. Keep yourself under control.”

“I am under control,” says Kylo, and Hux doubts it. Kylo feels his reproach like a blow; it makes him feel unwell.

“This is not control,” says Hux, and he sounds more derisive than Kylo expected. “You lack control all the time. I’ve rebuilt three quarter of the Finalizer because of your lack of control.”

His saber isn’t lit yet. Hux is wondering how long it’ll take for him to brandish it around like an unsatisfied child.

Kylo tenses, makes it harder to breath for him. Hux smiles anyway.

“If you’d spent more time learning to control what you can do, like your Master has advised you, the frames of my diplomas wouldn’t have broken thanks to your participative and _very controlled_ presence.” Hux, the piece of shit, is thinking about that again, in what happened that night. “You lack experience,” he says dismissively.

Kylo lights up the saber. A screen materializes in front of them but Kylo breaks the communicator that’s two meters behind Hux, without moving. The hologram disappears in static and noise. Kylo just stands stiff with his saber on, pondering how viable it would be to kill Hux right now.

Hux sighs a little with pretended boredom. “You don’t have to explain how great your power is. If you can’t control it, it is a weakness just as great.”

Hux definitely isn’t breathing as he should. Kylo spins the saber with his wrist.

“Weak and unexperienced?”, Hux thinks Kylo sounds rougher than usual, offended. Kylo agrees. “I thought, General, that my abilities were like an entire army; wasn’t that what you thought?”

Hux gets a memo on his personal comm. Two troopers get to the terrace right then as well. They petrify upon seeing Kylo and his saber. His voice sounds distorted, disturbing. “You’re contradictory.”

Hux shivers. Ren’s threats have no beginning or end in him, he thinks.

“She’s in one of the cells right now, I’ll leave the interrogation to you,” says Hux. His voice short at the end, but if there’s something in his face, it’s disgust, not pain, and he does feel it. Kylo can see through him with no problem.

Kylo chides, “You can’t give me ord-”

“Kill her, I don’t care, but control yourself!” Hux says with a murmur of voice.

Kylo walks away barely freeing him. Hux dares him, _insults_ _him_ , still in his thoughts. With vague resignation he thinks that if it weren’t for his Master they would probably have done anything to kill each other by now.

 

 

 

 

 

What is the light?

At the very beginning, the act of killing seems fearsome. He used to think with infinite naivety that the best way to solve a conflict would be without bloodshed. After, when he finally saw the world as a crude reality, absolute, and not like a pretty tracing of a failed past, it was the blood that he thought dramatic; blood is scandalous, smelly, it spills and mixes with everything.

In the Force, days after, he was able to recognize the trail the other padwans left: on his boots, in the crackle of his saber; the blood, like a memory, a judgement. Now, after the harsh and complex path he’s walked with the dark side of the Force, death presents itself like a natural consequence, like a tacit event that by his hand or by time’s will be executed. Besides, Kylo admits with no reservation, it has a certain therapeutic effect on him. In the Force a life that ends is one that begins somewhere else. The cycle moves, and the truth is that destroying, ending, breaking anything at all, really helps him to relieve stress. Darkness intensifies.

Kylo Ren feels stronger already; he stretches a little. The coyote woman wallows in her bonds.

“Oh, poor you,” he says.

She’s blue and black in the Force, cold, savage like this frozen moon. Kylo doesn’t have to see her mind to know she isn’t understanding him. She doesn’t speak basic, not only because she has never heard it, but because she can’t form the words. Her vocal cords are like a dog’s.

The coyote woman looks at him with honest bravery, as if her place in her clan gives her importance even here, in front of Kylo, who almost feels pity. He finds her stupid because she isn’t afraid of him. She still means fantastically to kill them all with heroism and save her people. Kylo can feel the murmur of her thoughts, of colour, images, emotions in the Force, crystal clear. They are a very primitive life form. Kylo observes for a moment with intrigue, because the coyote woman isn’t afraid. She’s showing her teeth, violently but well meant, ignorant.

It’s bizarre.

It amuses him, so he laughs a little. The coyote woman startles. He thinks he hasn’t been amused by anything for a long time. He might never have laughed with the helmet on before.

The air fills with distortion and rottenness. Kylo finds this situation ridiculous, can’t help himself. It’s not until he feels under the bridge of his mouth the taste of her fear that he stops, delighted.

“You’re making sense now, coyote,” he says, knowing that they believe themselves to be wolfs, or something like that, and that she is the alpha, the leader. He can’t deny himself to be depictive even if she doesn’t understand, her loss.

Kylo lights up the saber and she reacts immediately. Her restraints don’t allow her to make a battle stance, but she tightens herself to the _throne_ of the interrogations room, shows her fangs. All that goodwill gathered in a creature who doesn’t understand. It maddens him. She looks so ungainly that he gets closer and doesn’t forgive her for being naïve.

Little cuts. Kylo even asks her with serene entertainment if she has relations with the New Republic. Making an especially long stroke in her left leg he assures her that if she confessed her affiliation with the Resistance her suffering would end. Burning the skin of her forehead he feels the torrent of power that darkness brings upon all; he spins the sword around himself, hears her scream.

Darkness will arrive like a download, overwhelming and enormous. It will bring him enough understanding to keep on with his path. He hurts her, she moans a tearing demented sound. Kylo shuts her up. She seems to stifle in her own blood. It’s disgusting. Kylo feels odious.

It’s not that funny anymore, but he’s teasing with a climax.

When she doesn’t have paws any more, not exactly, and he sees she has made a mess of herself, he thinks this to be grotesque, and feels satiated. He interrogates her a little longer, caresses a little longer, never asks what has driven him so mad all this time.

_Don’t you regret anything, Ben? I mean, Ren, Kylo Ren, are you sure? Won’t it hurt too much to end everything? Won’t you give up upon all that pain? Don’t you feel this is tearing you apart? Don’t you see a thing, Ben, don’t you feel something is wrong? That everything is wrong?_

He thinks he screams at the end, bathed in frustration, darkness receives him, his accomplice.

Kylo feels her death very close, her guts, her skin, and pieces of her are around on the floor and she hates him so much. Kylo can taste the resentment; she was all good intentions and bravery on the surface, kissed by the light.

Until the light was extinguished.

Kylo Ren took charge of rummaging through her dark places, and the tissue burned, tore apart, the blood spilled, the broken organs stopped working.

The darkness comes and embraces all with no discrimination. The darkness is all depth. He breaks through her to kill. His saber crackles with a burned blood trace he can still feel.   _You are the coyote woman, and pain and hate embrace you. Death arrives like relief. You’re gone, gone, gone._

She disengages. Kylo Ren turns off the saber and with no motive, laughs a little again. Suddenly there’s calm. He doesn’t even feel revulsion when he leaves the interrogation room. His questions stop. There’s pure darkness behind his eyes. The power shelters him and Kylo walks, ecstatic, maybe smiling.

Light is superficiality.

 

 

 

 

 

Two reports arrive and they are so contradictory that he has to pause the video of the attack to decide where to go first.

Almost simultaneously Hux was informed that the eight troopers that guarded the interrogation room retreated aghast after Ren informed them they could take the leader of the savage clan to cremate her, and send her ashes to his room. Phasma explains they are all severely stressed and shocked, which is completely normal since Ren caused the situation.

The other report comes from the troopers guarding the command rooms. Phasma wrote him that a very suprised FN-3090 and FN-4562 informed her that Lord Kylo Ren tried to make conversation with them, telling them a joke about genitals and lightsabers.

Torture and blood he can understand, but jokes? Dick jokes?

He decides to face what makes sense first, closes the video, can’t focus, orders McBride to wait for him until he solves whatever the hell is going on and walks out of the command room.

It isn’t until he’s one step out that he notices, like he hasn’t for months, that he _doesn’t_ notice him.

He stops for a moment, looks around, doesn’t feel the walls watching, doesn’t feel that in the shadows of the troops that walk their perimeter, something grotesque is hidden. He feels his shoulders light, breathing easy, there’s something unusually calm in the ambient. He doesn’t know what to think.

 

 

 

 

 

Attached to the torture chair is what appears to have been the Leader of the Wolfs. Hux observes with no disgust the unrecognizable fur covered in red and black blood, and thinks of darkness. He notes the pieces of flesh strewn about, the blood pooled on the floor, the burned guts and her very open eyes. She’s static and almost empty, staring into the thin air with a broken expression. Her extremities end abruptly, and in her chest is a cauterized wound that surely killed her slowly. Her skin looks melted along with the fur. It stinks a little, truth is.

It has been years since Hux felt particular emotion towards death, not even one that evidences such suffering as this one, and that because everything is connected. One cannot build a weapon of massive destruction that will end the lives of an entire solar systems, and feel disgust facing the simple death of one “innocent”.

Death is familiar and close. Death is inevitable. Death has a lot in common with whatever Ren was longing for, inflicting his collective asphyxia on everyone all this time - and it doesn’t mean Hux understands how, but he knows.

The wolf leader is twisted in her place, like she’d tried to free herself repeatedly. She has long cuts, deep and scorched at the long and the wide of her body. She has some that look like scratches where her muscles met. It’s a gruesome spectacle.

Hux comes out of the room after a moment, and after ordering one of the cold-blooded troops to dispose of the corpse as per Ren’s instructions, he remains thinking that he actually wants to comprehend how, in fact, the Force works.

 

 

 

 

 

While he walks toward Ren’s room, in uneasy contemplation, he notices again that he isn’t exactly alone. It isn’t like it was a couple of hours ago, it isn’t like it has been all these months, it’s different, maybe worse.

Hux stops in the middle of nowhere (because there’s only snow around him, no walls or a real path) and in the air that blows with violence he feels Ren manoeuvring and vibrating.

When he asked the Leader Snoke, in a private meeting not long ago, to be allowed to know more about the Force, he felt scrutinized all the way back to his childhood memories with the stare he received, but in the end he got permission to read some of the restricted archives that Darth Vader decided to keep after the destruction of the Jedi and hunt for those that remained. He comes to discover a couple of things: the vow of chastity, and the omnipresent character of the Force.

He’s wondered if, by what he read, the Force exists in a deep connection with every flow of energy - which is something he can imagine, just barely - that allows the user to decipher what is going on even at great distance from one’s self, even before one’s self, even after one’s self.

He rubs his hands; he’s getting closer.

Could that be the reason why Ren seems to be present everywhere? Is that why Ren seems to know about everything that happens? Is that why Ren doesn’t understand simple things and gets furious? Is it because he cannot interpret what he feels? Is it because he doesn’t know how to prioritize one message from the other? Hux is calculatingly cold. He presses the access button. The computer greets him and allows him in. He shakes the snow off, and wonders again how the Force works.

 

 

 

 

 

He feels anticipation; the door opens when he stands in front of it. The room is empty. Ren must be in the bathroom.

It’s a little bizarre because Ren’s rooms are very similar to his own; the bed has the same black, gray and white linens, but it’s unmade; the closet has the same sliding doors, but there’s one left open; it even smells a little of whisky. There’s a bottle on top of the familiar center table.

It’s all ostentatious and in the same color.

Hux frowns. That bottle is the same brand he brought for the celebration a few days ago. He bought three hundred thousand bottles because he fancies that whisky. They bring it from Utapau, and he himself saved a bottle for later. He wonders when Ren took the bottle.

“I took it the day after the feast, General. I was looking for FN-3479, the reckless,” and Ren comes out of the bathroom.

He isn’t wearing his whole robe, the belt and the black piece he uses on top are off, the helmet too: he’s carrying it in one hand. It looks like he was cleaning it. In his other hand is a vaporizer. His hair is loose.

 _Despicable bastard_ , Hux thinks when he sees his freckled face.

Ren frowns. “I can hear what you just thought,” he says and doesn’t seem particularly angry.

Hux notices the whiskey bottle to be open. _I know Ren, that’s why I think about it._

Ren shrugs, doesn’t give importance to it while he sits in front the table and smokes.

“That’s not how the force works” he says.

Hux stays standing there without comprehending. He can feel Ren infuse everything with his disturbing presence, yet at the same time the familiar tension on the edge of destroying his surroundings with the smallest provocation is gone. He’s just sitting, _smoking and drinking whisky_ , not even making faces when he swallows the strong spirit. His cheeks are a little red.

“You’re staring, Hux,” Ren says, staring back.

Hux doesn’t know where but there’s a smile in his expression, maybe in the eyebrows or in the curve of the lips, or in the Force, he can’t tell. Hux stops looking at him. The more he does the strangest it is.

“I wasn’t expecting to find you in a good mood. I see now why the troopers reported to me with surprise on your behaviour.” Hux clears his throat, hears Ren lay the glass on the table and wonders how long it would take him to get drunk. “I see there’s no problems. Report what you obtained from the interrogation as soon as possible.”

Hux turns around, takes a step.

“Don’t run away,” Ren says.

“I’m not running away,” he answers, but he does it so fast he can’t help but wonder if he truly isn’t. What would he run away from? He’s never seen Ren in better spirits. It is odd that now of all times he wants to leave, but maybe not so much. He always wants to leave when he’s with Ren.

“I have nothing to do here.” Hux takes another step, the glass sounds against the table again and Hux turns around. Ren is wincing a little. Whisky ain’t so easy after all.

“I’d like to make the report right now. Sit down General. You can light up one of those, if you want.”

Hux takes out one of the cigarettes he has in his pocket. He was thinking of having one a while ago.

Ren nods and points at the chair. “Make yourself comfortable,” he says.

After a monotonous conversation and a whole cigarette, Ren stands up and from the open drawer takes another whisky glass. Hux notices the bed is made now, and wonders when that happened.

“While I told you the savages don’t speak basic,” Ren says, and Hux is exasperated with how intrusive he is.

“Leave me in peace, Ren,” he grumbles while Ren comes back to the table.

He pours two glasses, and when he hands one over he has dimples in his cheeks because he’s almost smiling.

“I’ve left you alone, General,” he murmurs, takes his glass in his fingers, “but when you think about me, I just notice.”

And he drinks, looking at him, seems amused. Hux feels his face boiling with anger, is this a reference to what they spoke about a moment ago, when Ren almost killed him? He drinks the whole glass in one go.

“I don’t think of you more than necessary; you’re the one always spying.”

Ren raises a brow, smokes.

After refilling the glass (which implies a lot of awkward silence) Ren looks at him again, straight on, in the eye. “I’m _spying_ the whole planet at all times. It’s unavoidable, since you turn out to be part of it.”

Hux downs the whole glass again. He’s too sober for this conversation. He dips into his pockets and lights up another cigarette. Ren is looking at him, intrigued. It’s hard. Hux heard him speak with a clear voice, sees him there with his freckles everywhere, with his shaggy hair, with the smoke close to his skin.

Hux looks the other way. “You’re spying. It’s the same. I notice as well,” says.

Ren serves again, but he keeps looking at him. He moves the fingers of his free hand and smokes. The bottle pours itself in the glass he grabs. Hux thinks he never saw Ren use the Force to do something non-destructive. He tries not to play emotions.

Ren drinks. “You’re thinking about me right now,” he says.

“You’re in front of me, we’re talking, of course I’m thinking of you.”

Ren waves the hand with the vaporizer dismissively, taking credit away from Hux’s words.

“You aren’t just _thinking_ of me.”

 _Oh, no_.

Hux stretches, picks up the glass and drinks it all. It feels like fire going down his throat. Ren watches him entertained.

“You think about my voice,” Ren says, and Hux feels embarrassed, cornered, closely watched. It overwhelms him but he pours himself another glass of whisky without asking permission and pretends.

“ _You_ _think_ I think of that,” he says sourly. Ren stands up, takes the bottle in hand and drinks from it.

“No,” Ren says. “I don’t think, I know.”

Ren passes him the bottle and Hux is thankful, for real, because sitting there where he is he’s drowning. He feels exposed. He drinks long, until he can’t anymore. Ren is biting his lower lip. He seems focused and Hux would like to know how to close himself to that.

“You can’t help it, Hux,” he says, “I know you think of my moles, of my hair, my-“

Hux raises a hand. “Stop, Ren.”

Ren looks at him about to retaliate and Hux straightens. He knew sooner or later Ren would try to get his fleeting imprudence out of him.

“You are not a Jedi anymore.” Ren seems to surround him, cage him, but he’s standing still looking at him. “Jedi swear chastity, don’t they?”

Ren remains silent. Hux smiles this time.

“Was that the reason behind my broken portraits? Is that something else you can’t control?”

Ren hesitates almost comically.

“The portraits have nothing to do with this,” he says, blushing, his eyes wide, uneasy.

Hux laughs, can’t help it.

“I don’t read minds Ren, but I know you’re lying.” Hux takes the bottle from the table, gives the cigarette a drag, drinks, breathes the smoke out, “I haven’t received any report on diploma portraits shattering without explanation.”

Ren makes a face.

“You are thinking about it,” says Ren, and Hux looks at his mouth, the puckered brows, the freckles. Thinks about having him close, saying things.

“No,” Hux says anyway, “you are thinking about it,” because one can always be a flirt, _aja!_ he’s a little drunk now.

Ren takes the bottle away from him and drinks. He’s closer now. He hands the whisky back; Hux takes it and drinks all he can. They look at each other and there’s a tension that’s familiar because of mutual hate; but it’s odd because there isn’t death in the middle. That already happened.

Ren is on top of him in an instant, heavy and barely taller, bracketing him with his legs, leaning on the chair and pink in the face because he’s surely drunk, surely drugged on death and darkness. Ren looks at him in the eye, and Hux doesn’t find strange the sensation of having him close, around, on top.

Hux would say everything he wanted to hear if he had Ren where he wanted him, with his freckles and black hair, his dimples.

Ren makes a pissed off sound, grabs him by the hair, and they kiss. At the same time, they crash, collide violently after touching. Hux gasps a little, opens his mouth and bites him, sucks a little of that lip he was biting. Ren breaths harshly, rounds him with his arms, tightens himself against Hux and Hux tries to open his mouth with his tongue, feels like he’s melting. Ren makes a confused noise, bites him, squeezes his neck inside one hand, his hair in the other.

“Open your mouth,” says Hux, really close, over his lips.

Ren does _._

He seems surprised, like he didn’t expected Hux to lick him inside out, like he didn’t expected Hux to bite at his tongue.

“Ren,” Hux says, “open your mouth more.”

Hux puts a hand on Ren’s back and pulls in, lets himself be bitten and tasted, licked over inexpertly. He laughs a little because it turns him on so much to have Ren there all hot and effervescent. He lets himself be done, and Ren kisses him clumsy, abruptly, fast.

“Ren,” Hux says, burying his fingers on Ren’s back, melted, “slower.” He licks the line of his jaw, the edge of his lips. Ren sighs, falls slow and heavy between his teeth, the cigarette Hux had burns alone while they kiss. Hux feels himself burning like the tobacco. Ren fills him up and Hux licks his neck.

They open each other’s clothes without talking. The zipper of the coat opens, the buttons go off, Ren bites his neck and Hux slides the zip of Ren’s pants until he can get his hands inside and feel him. Ren grabs him too strongly, bites him again.

“Take off your gloves,” he orders, and as Hux is taking them off, Ren is taking his off too.

Hux allows it with no meditation; they are touching hands, arms, shoulders, ribs, Ren’s dick against the palm of Hux’s hand.

Hux kisses him, explains him how to do it with bites, with licks. Ren thrusts short and Hux touches him more, anxious, so turned on he pulls him out of his clothes just to see him. Hux growls and twists his wrist, tightening up.

Ren moans over his lips. Hux smiles.

Hux throws away the consumed cigarette, he wants to pull his cock from his trousers.

With one hand Hux holds them both, and Ren grinds with no rhythm against him. He tightens his grip on his neck with one hand and they are kissing again, their mouths open. Ren gasps. He tastes like whisky and inexperience.

“You’re thinking about it,” Ren says. Hux wants to fuck him so bad, slide all the way in, until there’s only heat, pressure. Ren digs his fingers on his neck.

“Do you want it as well?” Hux asks.

Ren looks at him, stunned.

Then he thrust abruptly. It sounds like something breaks, and Ren comes with his mouth open.

Hux hasn’t stop touching himself. He can’t stop looking at his mouth now, that terrible mouth, he wants it so much he closes his eyes, he could come but he doesn’t.

Opens his eyes, Ren is looking down at him.

“You won’t even say it now?” Ren asks and his eyes slide down, Hux wants to kiss him again.

“Come here,” he asks, “come here.”

Ren watches him with interest, he approaches without moving, like always.

“Come here, come here.”

Ren goes.

“What do you want?” he asks and Hux rolls his head, tries to kiss him.

“Come here.”

Ren seems a little annoyed but he lowers his head, Hux brings him in with one hand and _yes_ , he has him there over his mouth, inside his mouth, under his tongue, everywhere.

Ren breathes hard, opens his mouth wider, licks, bites. It’s a kiss as much as a fight but Hux is jerking off inside that breath, inside that smell of anger, whisky and both of them.

“Hux,” Ren murmurs, like an exigency, like torture because he could draw it out of him and it’d be easier, it’s not like Hux would want to ever surrender.

“Would you?” Hux asks, drunk, almost coming on his fingers, “Would you? Would you? Would you?” Ren stares, Hux doesn’t open his eyes but knows, searches for him, kisses him, crashes.

“Do it,” he says, stops touching himself, opens his eyes. “Do it,” begs, holds him by the arms, bites his lips with anger, maybe even hurts him. Ren drowns a deep sound. “Do it, do it, do it,” he pleads, most of all thinks about it, that mouth around his dick, soft, red and boiling, up and down, with his tongue, with those eyes staring back at him, he could come just like this, he could.

Ren kneels between his legs, Hux kisses him from above and feels vertigo. They look at each other. It’s brief. Ren opens his lips a little and Hux touches his mouth with the tip of his fingers.

The hair covers his face and for a moment it’s only the sensation, warmth. Hux holds his hair behind his head, Ren has his eyes closed, he’s frowning, his mouth is red and his cheeks swallowed. Hux thrusts, wants to get it all in and pull out slow, Ren holds him by one leg but allows it, opens his eyes almost at the end.

When Hux pulls out slow, Ren is looking at him.

It doesn’t last. Ren is digging his fingers on his legs, his back.

It doesn’t last, Hux thrusts and Ren vibrates against his cock, some hair-strays free from his hold and Ren has wet eyes, an open mouth, he’s blushing. Hux adjusts him close to his body and Ren makes a sound; there’s two glasses and a bottle on the table, broken, the glass is spilled on the floor.

Hux pets Ren’s hair and comes, he feels liquid and boiling inside that mouth, groans and stops making pressure, Ren backs off with big eyes and stained lips.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a whole lot of broken glass, again. Hux accommodates himself inside his clothes a little better and feels what glass cutting in the guts feels like, sits straight and feels like an idiot, he’s had enough window time, Ren has been in the bathroom for a while.

Looks around himself, finds the black robe and the belt at the foot of the bed, inside a drawer: takes it out of his coat pocket and attaches the locating device in the belt. He looks at it in the light, looks at it straight ahead, from behind and he thinks it’s well camouflaged with the material. He puts it back in the draw-

“So obvious,” Ren says. “For a moment I expected you to be smarter. How dare y- _You truly believed I wasn’t going to notice? It’s absou-”_

Hux narrows his eyes. “Shut up Ren.”

Ren looks like himself again, Hux looks at him, he has no helmet but there’s evident annoyance in his expression.

“You intrude in my business without permission because you can. It disgusts me.” Ren raises his eyebrows in an almost comical gesture.

Hux points vaguely at the belt with the locating device. “This is my way to intrude. Don’t you dare deny it to me.”

Ren looks at him with open reproach.

“Teach me how the Force works,” asks Hux, because it’s always better to try.

Ren mocks him. His face does nothing but he’s mocking him.

“I don’t want Snoke to know about this in general, I don’t know how to do it, I know it could happen, that you could teach me,” says Hux, because he was prepared, more or less. “In return, I could teach you how sub-hyperspace works.”

Ren doesn’t speak. Hux lets his worries be evident, even if he’s mostly worried about himself, and Ren  is intruding as always. For a moment he thinks Ren will remain silent, but Hux sees him breathe in and close his eyes.

“The Force is dynamic,” Ren says.

Hux notices he’s drunk.


	5. The stars' assassin I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there, how are you doing?
> 
> I'm having a drink, I came back but I feel like I already did this whole thing, maybe because I finished the translation completely a few days ago. But translating isn't the end, we are still in the middle of it.
> 
> I'm no good for slow burn stories, I wouldn't say this is one, but again I wouldn't call this story a romance either. I hope Hux to convince you all about his thoughts, I enjoyed the world from his eyes, I had fun with this part, even if now I feel like it was years ago. 
> 
> Thank you all for your comments and for staying with me through this, infinite gratitude to my beta UP2L8 as always.
> 
> Kylo, meditation and me are three, I'm gonna recommend you today the whole album [La Ley Innata](https://youtu.be/wJxkaEcjQdw=), by Extremoduro. It's in Spanish, I wish you could understand the lyrics at the beginning of the Second Movement, because that surely is Kylo Ren music.
> 
> Mercy for you people, I hope to see you in the dark side.
> 
> Yo-ho.

**The Stars’ Assassin I**

 

 

“Civil war and the brute situation of a ‘state of nature’ (the war of all against all) can only be avoided by strong, undivided government”

Hobbes.

 

 

“Perhaps you do not see it, Master?” Ben wonders with unease.

The apprentice’s braid brushes his robe and Luke Skywalker gives him his attention of course, but doesn’t look at him. Luke closes the book he has in his hands and advises him to seek tranquility by meditating or training.

“You’re too unsett-

“Trouble coming for me,” Ben says.

And this time Luke does look at him, heaviness in his eyes, uncertainty, anticipated pain. Ben Solo knows his uncle has felt it as much as him. Luke stops and observes him. The library is suddenly a high green island, the open sea waves tremendous.

“I will do the right thing,” Ben says with absolute resolve.

Kylo Ren wakes up staring at the ceiling of his room. It smells salty and in the darkness he concludes that he did the right thing. Back then he already doubted the supremacy of the light, in his head ideas had stirred and forbidden thoughts had arisen about the New Jedi Order. He feels warm joy thinking that even when he was wrong for so long he finally came to see beyond his ignorance. He finds himself half smiling. It’s magnificent what the connection with the Dark Side of the Force fills him. Mentally he thanks the coyote woman for her transformation; he feels strong, omnipresent.

Kylo remembers Hux leaving after learning to insulate a thought from his mind. He had bags under his eyes and he had walked like his shoulders were heavy. There’s something funny about the thought. Kylo falls asleep with infinite ease. Impassive, he feels the darkness embrace him.

The next day he awakes to remember an almost perpetual ocean and that R2 droid his old Master loved so much.

Dreams are strange. Deciphering them is very much like trying to predict the future with the Force: almost impossible.

 

 

 

 

 

 _You’re absolute blackness._ Kylo walks aimlessly among the pullulating rows of constructor troopers, cleaning troopers, surveillance troopers, officers, engineers, technicians. The construction advances with giant steps. A few meters ahead he sees a nest of little insects, working restlessly. Kylo closes his eyes and for one moment he feels himself immersed in one enormous pattern, a huge cosmic gear that inevitably revolves back its starting point. As if time, instead of being a straight line, was a spiral.

Primitive life forms build their colonies in the ground, destroying and restructuring on their way. The First Order builds its red heart by destroying almost half a moon to restructure the Galaxy.

History doesn’t repeat itself, it meets with itself, like rotating on an axis.

Decades ago the Empire built a Death Star, and then a bigger one. Now they are building inside the core of a moon. Decades ago his grandparent ended the Jedi, and one and a half decades ago Kylo Ren did it as well. It is not the same. Contexts are different, time has gone by, but there’s a pattern that expands and grows bigger, to meet again, like living and dying.

He wants to train, the Force is kind under his feet, the air in his mask reaches him easily.

Kylo decides to return to the Finalizer as soon as possible. He comes up with a plan he thinks ingenious; sees but ignores that a couple of flying insects attack and destroy the insect colony he noticed a moment before.

 

 

 

 

 

At the beginning it’s like the trooper doubts him. He does, in fact. The seven thousand that function as a battle regiment on board the ship are afraid of him. Kylo can’t help but roll his eyes, but he goes on. It isn’t as if the trooper is in a position to deny his orders. Kylo is in command as much as Hux in this ship; he’s the representation of the Supreme Leader’s will.

“Send the next training group. I will see them downstairs as soon as possible. Inform your Captain, FN-6788. That’s an order.”

The trooper turns around and walks towards Phasma. Kylo can smell his unsettlement, but at least the trooper stopped hesitating about whether or not to do it.

He starts the walk towards the inferior levels himself. Kylo likes to train in between shifts, and because of Hux’s imposed strict schedule, there’s almost nobody wandering in the halls, so few have seen him. This time, though, he would like as many as possible to be present.

 

 

 

 

 

At his call Phasma sends the elite assault squad and another 50 troopers, all of them standing in impeccable formation when he gets down to the gym. She’s front and center, and without tremor or hesitation she asks him if they are enough for now or if he wants more to be called. Kylo gives them a look. The Force curves deliciously on his touch, he knows them all, has felt them sleep, eat, fuck; he would recognize their voices individually.

He could laugh; he’s full with emotion.

“This is good Phasma, I appreciate this.”

Phasma widens blue eyes hidden behind her helmet. It’s almost funny, because her stance says nothing in particular but Kylo can feel her in the Force, all surprised and a little disturbed. He feels her leave and hears her ask herself _what the hell is going on with Ren today, shit, since when does he thanks anybody for anything, so many years of the same attitude for it to change today and feel apprecia-_

Kylo stretches his arms, begins to walk in between the rows.

“You,” he says looking at FN-9032.

“You,” he says pointing at FN-4056.

“You,” he says in front of the first elite soldier.

“You too,” he says to the last trooper of the first row. They call him Nines; his name is FN-2199.

He chooses twenty and dismisses the rest. They leave marching in step, all of them scared. Some of the ones staying are even more scared.

Once the rest are gone he reveals his plan to those who remain.

 

 

 

 

 

When the first session is over Hux contacts him in his renovated room, that incidentally  looks like it was never destroyed. Kylo doesn’t need to answer to feel the annoyance cooking up in Hux’s throat.

“It was necessary,” he says plainly before hearing him speak, and Hux only exhales loudly. It isn’t a proper sigh, but an insult without words.  Hux is pained to deal him.

Kylo thinks he could laugh. He’s in the best mood he’s had in months, maybe in the whole year. He hasn’t felt the need to destroy anything in almost thirty hours.

“You could’ve me notified before,” Hux says, and Kylo understands that Hux knows what he intends with his plan, or at least imagines it. “Organizing an unscripted training regimen for a whole squad is a lot of changes to the training schedules and all that implies. Keep yourself inside the established hours. I won’t do this again.”

Kylo feels a little like bringing up that Hux still has bags under his eyes and that he should be resting instead of tasking himself with unnecessary work, but then he remembers he doesn’t care and doesn’t say anything.

“And don’t kill any of my men, Ren.”

“I won’t,” he says. “That’s the point, to not kill any of them.”

That seems to pacify Hux. Kylo feels him lean back in his spinning chair. He’s in his room, massaging his temples with one hand while he holds a cigarette with the other. They stay silent, Kylo is a little uneasy, like training recharged him with energy instead of draining him. He plays with the unlit sword between his hands, doesn’t _think_ of Hux, just notices him. He’s a place in the Force clearly different from everything around him.

Hux’s place in the Force is another one hundred thousand militants of the First Order right now on this moon, is the trees on the hill south from his room, is the humanoid wolves now working as slaves in the depths of the Starkiller construction.

Hux is order in many ways. He has forty two reports on troopers open in his computer, a new file of schedules with thirty variations for the Finalizer, one timeline with twenty-four updates recently registered about the excavation and construction of the weapon, twelve engineer reports, four technician complaints, two books of Jedi literature, one map detailing the solar systems near their location; and he’s got a call open with him, another on hold with Phasma.

Kylo can also read inside his head a chronological history of action that includes high military secret, cigarettes, three whiskies, and one porn site that was reported because a trooper tried to access it from the recently installed servers on the moon. He knows Hux will take a look at it later.

In his room all things are placed with cold calculation. There are weapons everywhere one can be hidden, clothes are folded so in an emergency he won’t have to hesitate to put together the whole uniform at once. It seems like there’s a premeditated disposition to the ashtray on the table in front of Hux.

Kylo knows that the First Order seems to work on automatic because Hux knows how to move the pieces under his command, so many of them, with a precision that doesn’t necessarily comes from years experience, but from a cunning wit that flows through him naturally.

Hux is order. Hux is the First Order, precise, politically correct until the show, right down to the hair brush and the hair product he keeps in the same drawer where he placed the lubricant and condoms he stole from the girl he killed with no pain or remorse.

The Force is with him even if he doesn’t feel it as it is. Kylo thinks he’s an organized idiot with a lot of power. Hux exhales while checking the reports in alphabetic order, he’s frowning a lit-

“Ren, stop intruding.”

Kylo catches the sword in the air, he turned it on at some point but has no intention to burn anything. He hasn’t. The ashes of the coyote woman and the others are in front of him.

“I’m not, you’re only there, thinking.”

“I’m not thinking of anything.”

“Of course you are, that’s why you hide it from me. It doesn’t matter. I could defeat that barrier if I wanted to.”

“I’m going to hang up this call, leave me alone R-”

“Tomorrow morning the east surveillance tower might fall down. They didn’t dig deep enough when they built the foundation.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, I’m gon-”

“You should rest more, Hux.”

Kylo is the one who hangs up. His face feels hot, and suddenly he feels drained. He lies down to sleep as fast as he can. He doesn’t think at all of what Hux was about to say and didn’t (and didn’t let him know what it was), he’s not concerned, he tells himself.

Before he falls asleep he thinks of order, and for a brief moment the order Hux imposes isn’t necessarily bothersome.

 

 

 

 

 

He goes fifty hours without destroying anything, and not wanting to. Kylo doesn’t check the schedule Hux sent him. The murmur in the Force from his twenty elected troopers foresees the hour to go down to the training complex.

The tremendous sensation of connection the coyote woman brought him starts to abandon him, but Kylo Ren has to extract as much as he can from his paroxysm. In the middle of the sensibility wave he was completely sure that a he’d be in the middle of a huge battle soon, besides becoming suddenly aware of the _superficiality_ of the light.

His plan with the troopers had two goals: the first is to train harder, of course; the second is to impregnate a select group of troopers with the reassuring experience that having contact with the Force will bring.

Kylo is thinking of reinforcing the conviction they have with the First Order, so strong among the chosen ones, so they will spread such influence between the other doubting troopers. Also, he wants to make sure they regulate treason by themselves, judging it, despising it, condemning it. After all, Kylo knows a few tricks to control minds and all the basic techniques one may use regularly.

He’s so sure of his path that before he leaves to train he sends Hux a requisition to provide his troopers with Z6 batons, harmless weapons that can withstand the strike of a lightsaber.

Kylo doesn’t marvel at their wit, but he doesn’t find the troopers stupid either. He finds himself almost having fun, placing targets in remote places of the complex and making sure the trenches are safe enough. All the preparations sink him into a sort of meditation.

When Nines inform him from the furthest corner that they are ready to attack. Kylo lights up the saber in the middle of the tatami and closes his eyes; four shoot him simultaneously.

The training is hard, even though he’s able to feel all twenty of them in the Force. When they attack, many of his decisions are spontaneous. He has to trust his sensibility, his reflexes, his body to answer to those two shots from his right in time for the one coming for his left calf.

The troopers maneuver around the crossfire with evident fear, and Kylo screams for them to stop when he notices that most of his evasives haven’t hit the targets but arbitrary places in the complex. The troopers stop firing with relief and the last uncontrolled burst of blaster fire bounces to die far away from where it should.

Kylo draws a furious line in the tatami and even though he’s angry he feels a little like himself again.

There isn’t one of those troopers who weren’t expecting with vertigo the moment Kylo would destroy something guided by frustration. None of them react particularly, none of them speak to him either.

If light is ephemeral, superficial, _what’s in your surface, Kylo Ren? What composes the light that will extinguish in you?_

Kylo is sure that the source of all his weaknesses can be found in The Pain.

Even before he gave himself to the dark side his connection with the Force made evident what is coming from the false sensation of individuality that one attaches to pain, judgments, and other limits to the power and consciousness that could be reached.

It’s been almost ten days since he began to train with his elect (and not necessarily elite) group of troopers.

The more one is insensitive to the Force, the more one has the vain sensation of being separate from the All, of being _one apart_. Every flow of energy, every particle, even empty space - everything is part of the same; the Force is with all, the living, the dead, the inert, the past, and the future.

Kylo knows that before becoming his lightsaber, the metal he’s holding was in the depths of a volcano, which at the same time was once tree and river, animal, blood. All has a transit, one is all because there’s constant vibration and what is his skin at the microscopic level is mixing with his gloves, and which are both mixing with the metal, and the metal with his robes, and his robes with the uniform of the trooper that almost trips when he pivots on a heel.

Everything is in a constant state of change. The Kylo Ren that arrived to the training complex is different from the one that left his room. He’s breathed the air of two kilometers of ship and now atoms of different metals, meals, hair, sweat, plastic, smoke, hair product, soap, and thousands of other things are mixing with his lungs, are part of him.

Every atom of his body is as old as the entire universe. Matter doesn’t erase from existence, it transforms.

But the individual is blind, disconnected, imbecilic.

 _You’re air_ . The Individual believes that they are a consciousness _apart_ , that they are different from the stone or the shit. _You’re three kilometers of ship; you float above the atmosphere of the Starkiller._ The Individual, separating themselves of all around them, ignores, classifies what surrounds them as if it were unknown, stares, pretending to be separate. _You’re twenty one helmets, no individual identities; we all come from the same rhythm._ The Individual contemplates time and suffers for what they believe they haven’t witnessed and for what they believe they won’t witness. _You’re the birth and the dying of the suns, you’re the casual greeting._ The Individual loves the transitory and suffers for what they think will leave them, for what doesn’t love them back in their fleeting existence; the individual feels pain for a life that means only a breath in the eternal, universal song. _You’re the universe, the warmth of the stars and the cold of the shadows, life, death, breath, depth, ephemeral and long-lived._

_You’re the infinite trajectory of a close range shot._

The Individual believes to feel abandonment, believes to feel that he doesn’t belong, believes to feel a pain that consumes him forever.

That’s The Pain, everything arbitrary that the Individual grants to his condition of consciousness and that brings him suffering. The total consciousness comes with the overwhelming and easing sensation of have, be, and keep being all. One breath, one life, one father that leaves you behind or a mother that doesn’t come looking for you, nothing of that matters, that’s just one moment in the course of eternity. To be one with the Force is to abandon all limits that prioritize eighty years of life above the millennial turn and burn of the Galaxy.

 _Ah, who would have known, it’s been there all the time._ Kylo Ren dodges a shot that deflects, and this time he resets its course for it to hit the target.

What a meditation.

So his superficiality, his Pain, his vain sensation of individuality, his superficial light: it’s the suffering that comes from the betrayal of his family.

FN-4056 trips over his own feet while changing position. Kylo watches him turn in the air and fall. He laughs.

The other twenty laugh with him, even though he isn’t laughing for the same reason.

_Light extinguishes, light is like the Individual, fugacious, superficial._

 

 

 

 

 

After two weeks he’s sure he achieved it. There are a hundred targets disposed in different places of the complex, and Kylo is able to deflect each and every one of the five shots aimed at him and send them to one of the targets. With this training he’ll be able to withstand enemy fire at high speed, and it’ll also allow him to return the fire towards his attackers.

He’s proud. Because of the troopers that train with no rest he hasn’t felt any special interest in destruction without reason for the last two hours and a half.

He knows Hux is coming down to the complex, he can feel him in the elevator of the superior plants, with his scowl and his arms behind his back, all finely brushed hair and tension.

Kylo orders the troopers to fire another round. The last time he found it difficult to block shots if they came at the small of his back. He asks them to shoot him thrice in that place, and even though Nines thinks it is suicidal, he doesn’t question. Kylo has proven him wrong so many times that he’s starting to doubt his doubts.

At the beginning Kylo feels Hux walk around the high breach that allows officers to supervise the complex. He almost completes a whole lap before stopping, and Kylo entertains the notion of directing the shots at him.

They fire at Kylo nine times and he feels empty in his stomach, he turns on his knees, lowers his head, rotates the sword 360 degrees in front of his body and when there’s only one shot to deflect he feels himself out of trouble.

Then there’s a shot at his right (that he can deflect), one at the left side of his head (that he could dodge asleep) and one that comes from _above._

For a brief moment he _doubts_ his senses, _why it’s coming from ab- oh that puny whoreson._

Kylo closes his eyes and follows the course of the Force through his body because nothing could be a better idea, anyway.

Bends one knee, twist the saber almost touching his helmet at his right, at his left… He can feel the pressure Hux still has on the trigger of his gun, inhales, the shot is too close to twist the saber in time.

When he opens his eyes he feels electricity on his left arm, he has it extended in front of his chest. He did it instinctively; euphoria floods him. The trooper’s shots ended up in their targets, and Hux’s shot is frozen in the air, one single red line that beats and trembles furiously.

Hux is almost as surprised as he is. Kylo has never stopped a shot with the Force. He thinks he can hear it rustle and snarl, red and killing like the General, who gives him a look that could mean anything, and leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a whole lot of ignorant people pretending to direct the building of something they cannot dimension in their heads. The biggest job Hux has isn’t to rule the Galaxy; that’s an end. The _real_ work is to change the mentality of the common man. Like the one who refuses to install the hinges of a door the way he was instructed because he’s _convinced_ he knows how to do it _better._

This happens so much, with the ones who don’t understand a thing. They seem to be coldly sure of knowing it all and they believe they have every argument to defend their cause.

General Hux comes down from the new east tower - because the last one fell down just like Ren predicted - and comes near to the officer who argues with the constructor; for some reason he’s been hearing them fight for ten minutes now.

“Gentleman,” he says without raising his voice, and the two immediately turn around to look at him with big eyes, instantly quieting to hear him.

“The hinges have to be outside the door,” Hux says, and the constructor raises an arm, but Hux doesn’t allow him to argue. “I know you will say that it would make the door insecure because attackers could open the door from outside, and that would normally be a legitimate concern. However, this particular door may need to be opened forcefully from outside by maintenance personnel. If the moon overheats because of the stored energy, the interior levels will experience malfunctions. This structure is designed with many strategic places to free excess heat without damage to the complex, and it’s necessary for them to be accessible, even if they are overheated. If the system malfunctions and blocks this entrance, _the hinges must be outside so this door can be opened regardless._ There are five doors before this one that are installed with the utmost security measures.”

There’s nothing else to be said.

That day he has to correct the – not analytic and apparently blind to reflex ion - points of view of almost twenty technicians. He notices that some troopers decide to act on intuition and he has to explain briefly and concisely why they have to follow the patrol routes even if the land is uneven and it’ll take longer.

It’s tiresome, to deal with the ignorant. But Hux is merciful; everything that’s happening, the building of his weapon and his intention to rule the Galaxy, all of it is an enormous act of mercy _._ That’s what lets him sleep at night, knowing, feeling that he’s shepherding the worlds into better days.

Truth is volatile, versatile, fluid. From his point of view it is false to state that there’s only one truth. In no situation is there only one truth. There are _the truths_.

The various points of view are always there, the different sensations, the opinions, the sensorial perceptions, the memories. If right now he gave a speech to twenty people and all of them immediately wrote summaries, every summary would be written differently and they would all refer to the same speech. If he himself made the summary it would still be different from the original speech, and different from the twenty other summaries. And they could all be right, they could all be a truth. The truths.

There are plenty of creatures that are in capacity of reason, and because of that they consider their point of view to be _the reason_. Consider, as a case in point, the radar technician that sends a comm to him, although there is a protocol of almost twenty people in between them, to tell him that she’s sure they don’t need to dig more than five meters deep to support the earth poles because she’s sure that “there’s no way that’s not enough.”

Hux could give her a geology lesson to brief her on the different kinds of soil that can be found in the moon, a lesson on argumentation to explain how fallacious is her statement, a lesson on philosophy to make her clear the infinite possibilities where five meters aren’t enough. He could also have her killed and be cool about it. The truth is he feels the pull to do so.

But no, Hux takes almost two minutes and a half to write her a paragraph that should be _more than enough_ explanation for her limited way of analyzing the world. He sighs, and thinks that it would be liberating to tear apart everything in his way when it bothers him, like Ren would, but that wouldn’t lead to actual progress.

Real progress is slow, tedious, and implies a lot of time invested in unveiling the truths to others. That’s the actual path to sustainability, life in peace, mercifulness. To take in arms the one who unknows and explain to them why reality isn’t just black and white.

Of course, as it always is, there are boundaries to that tolerance of the ignorant. For example: Captain Phasma informs him in a voice message that one technician opened fire against another in the entrance of the forest because he discovered they were fucking the same trooper, or something like that. Hux has a lot to do so he sends troopers to solve the situation; then Phasma reports again that the technician was also drunk on the job and tried to shoot the troopers, damaging the control tower.

“Kill him,” Hux answers immediately. Phasma confirms within three seconds that the target has been eliminated.

To change a point of view one considers to be truth is hard work. Hux has studied some psychology, of course, knows approximately how people think. And what happens is that people become certain of things, sometimes without proof. Certain. Period. They go on for years, gathering information to support their certainty and talking to people who believe the same way. If one spends all their life believing something, it isn’t easy for someone to change that. No, it isn’t easy to rearrange what is in anybody’s head. Not even with proof, not even with money or whores. There are things people believe, and they believe them, period.

There are people who believe in their gods. There are people who believe queers to be physically ill. There are people who believe their politic views will save the world. And those people haven’t seen any god, or have medical degrees, or have studied politics. Still, they are so sure in their beliefs that even if they are shown indisputable proof to the contrary they will ignore them, look the other way, get uncomfortable, even angry, and in the end, after fighting and scowling, they will keep thinking what they thought before despite all sane reasoning.

That a creature is able to use reason doesn’t mean they will. To hell with it. Hux has tried in vain to _reason_ with political prisoners, even had conversations both rewarding and boring with members of _The Resistance_ , and all of them are ignorant barbaric sons of bitches, closed minded, slow thinkers that even reading numbers and statistics, even hearing testimony, even with research texts, and conceding to the logical argument of his statements, at the end of the interrogations they still believe that _democracy,_ the worst of the worst, is the optimal path to peace in life.

Sometimes it pisses him off so much that it sours his whisky, the best of the best.

However, even if it’s complicated, one has to try to the end. The ignorant don’t understand but they are docile, and they are because they give in to mistaken thoughts without a fight. But, if the ignorant attempt to go against the stability of what is reasonable, if because of their blindness they attack what’s logical and true, they have to be stopped.

A boy won’t shit in the middle of the living room, because if he does his parents will be there to slap his ass and amend the mistake. If there’s a reasonable, well thinking, open minded movement, fully meant to be inclusive and merciful with the living creatures of the Galaxy – such as the First Order - a bunch of retarded beings will not stop the momentum of reason just because they don’t understand that their system is counterproductive, naïve, slow, and fake.

If the threat is so severe that the ignorant threaten themselves, then they have to be stopped. If the threat is so great that it come between the development of millions, then death and destruction shall be upon them, nobody needs them anyway.

Democracy gives power to the ignorant. That’s why democratic civilizations fall. For the few who make time for knowledge, to see beyond, they become oppressed by the tyranny of the majority. Multitudes are primitive, instinctive, idiotic, easily controlled. Ignorant majorities choose despicable leaders. They destroy their own planets with ill-conceived progress and unconsidered industrial development.

Hux’s mercy isn’t the “mercy” traditional morality teaches. It means to erase all that comes in his way, and thus bring order with power for everyone’s sake, the ignorant and not so ignorant. Because someone has to end this cycle of conflict. Progress has to go on.

Mercifulness is a wrongly conceived word. Hux thinks he can’t use it in one of his speeches without delving too deeply into linguistics, and the truth is he doesn’t expect to be understood, much less expect anybody to understand why he gives new meaning to the word, so he keeps his own definition of mercifulness as a personal achievement of his own ethics.

Mercifulness, according to Hux, is the most beautiful part of power.

The Starkiller, then, is the highest act of mercy he could ever imagine. How else could he face the threat of a political mechanism as complex and layered as the Republic? He’s in awe sometimes at how multifaceted it is despite its primitive ideals.

When he’s reaching the meeting room with the high command of the First Order, he hears an argument between two troopers.

“I really wanna fuck that ass!”

“But it’s true that taking it in the ass hurts, dude.”

Hux clears his throat; both troopers turn around.

“Then use pretty words,” Hux advises.

After all, power is the capacity of speech, of convincing others that it is possible to control violence and death.

Without that no government would be effective, democracy or empire. It is necessary to dominate whatever causes pain. Hux is building a planet that will cause as much pain as possible, and he’s doing it to bring peace and stability. It’s a planet sacrificed for the sake of the millions that spin with the whole Galaxy.

Mercifulness.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo has the inevitable sensation that something big is coming, he feels it like the emptiness one feels while free falling. He’s not falling yet, though.

He knows Hux will contact him again tonight because he can feel the way his computer works. Kylo is lying on his bed thinking of mercifulness when a hologram of Hux makes itself visible on the wall he’s not looking at. His own hologram must be his legs. He programmed his computer to answer on automatic.

“Are you sure about this?” Hux asks.

“Yes,” says Kylo sitting up. He’s not wearing the mask because he just had a shower and his hair is wet. “We don’t know where Luke Skywalker is and we don’t know if he’s training somebody else. There could be threats”.

Hux gives him an odd look, as if he were considering him. Kylo cannot know what he’s thinking, not exactly.

“Wouldn’t you be able to feel if there are more Force sensitive creatures?” Kylo is so unprepared for Hux knowing that, he’s about to speak, but- “Here I was thinking that you asked for weapons that can withstand lightsaber strikes for the stormtroopers so they could control _you_ when you had an anger attack, to prevent you from destroying anything else. I suppose I’m not really surprised to discover that this was not the case.”

Anger burns in his stomach. Kylo stretches an arm to reach for the helmet beside him and Hux looks at him through the hologram with particular intensity. He’s sitting in his silly swivel chair, the one that makes him feel in charge. Kylo can feel the coldest wall of his room at Hux’s back, because in the hologram he can just see him and nothing else.

“Don’t run away,” Hux says.

Kylo doesn’t put the helmet on.

“It’s too evident,” Kylo pins him with his best pissed off stare and Hux frowns. “Have you spoken with my Master since I taught you how to hide your thoughts?”

“I’m not hiding anything.” Hux looks away, frowning harder.

“Of course not,” Kylo answers sarcastically. “You’re obviously not doing it.”

Kylo thinks he could blow the computer into Hux’s face if he just focused a little harder.

Hux tenses everywhere. Kylo can see him waist up but he can feel the way he tightens his fists over his knees.

“And I haven’t spoken with the Supreme Leader.”

“Your problem is order.” That makes Hux look back at him. “You pretend to organize _all_ , but of course not all is order inside your head.” Kylo can tell by the quirk of his mouth he wants to fight back but Kylo shakes his head, keeps talking. “Nobody thinks in cold order, not even you, even if you want to. Not even my Master.”

Hux stretches an arm, disappears partially from the hologram, and comes back again with a glass of alcohol. Kylo can smell the brandy. He wonders vaguely when he brought it, because he hadn’t seen it before, and he finds a black cloud inside Hux’s mind as an answer, finely delineated.

“Hux,” he says with his best condescending voice, “if you draw a line to hide everything that concerns me inside you head, it’s too obvious. Nobody’s consciousness is that organized. Since we started talking you’ve thought of food, ethics, weapons, clothes, drinks, orders, childhood memories, this morning’s memories, money, philosophy… I could go on enumerating things as you continue to think of them. But then, all you’ve been thinking about me…”

There’s a moment of silence where they just stare at each other. Hux seems bothered most of all. Kylo is certainly bothered most of all.

“I know you’re insulting me even if I can’t feel it. I know you’re remembering and associating things after every word I say. If you hide everything the cut it’s too clean, so much so that it’s obvious that something is being hidden. My Master would notice immediately, because you’re hiding _everything_ related to me.”

Another pause. Hux pours himself another glass.

“What you’re saying is…” he drinks once and draws a circle with his shoulders. The circles under his eyes are barely lighter than last time. “I have to allow my mind to be disorganized to confuse him, and so he’ll think he knows all I’m thinking.”

To explain telepathy to someone insensitive to the Force is hard, mostly because there are a lot of sensations with no words to define them.

“Yes,” Kylo says anyways. There are images inside Hux’s head that confirm he understood what was meant. “Something like that.”

Hux makes a face and Kylo thinks he’s trying to reveal the uncompromising elements.

Kylo isn’t sure what pisses Hux off so much about this, but the first thing he gets from the mind of the General is that Kylo is a bloody bastard and that he’s hated.

“Hm,” Kylo murmurs without surprise. Hux looks at him and suddenly he emits a whole lot of things, memories about his behavior in the ship and the moon, a bunch of insults, a long list of criticisms, the far away first image Hux has of him, the most recent one when they where encharged with the Finalizer.

Kylo feels he could laugh.

“What?” says Hux.

They stare at each other briefly, Kylo is quietly imagining hurting him when Hux hangs the call.

What could be so embarrassing that he hides it so much, Kylo wonders.

 

 

 

 

 

Almost a week goes by until the day he wakes up because he feels empty in his stomach, like free falling again. His Master summons him, and in front of Hux - who’s in very well pretended mental chaos - tells him that in the Force he’s found a huge trace of the location of Luke Skywalker. To get such information into their hands it’ll be necessary for Kylo and his six knights to travel to the Chandrila solar system to steal the encrypted data kept by the New Republic, which contains an almost complete map to find the last Jedi.

His Master assures him that such an intelligence mission will cost him the unlikely.

Kylo says nothing, but neither does he hide how inside him a thousand emotions swirl; vague memories of his family rain on him, no shelter.

“The Dark Side will guide you, Lord Ren,” his Master says, and Kylo feels little relief, but it’s the best anybody could’ve said.

 

 

 

 

 

Any place remotely close to the mere presence of the New Republic is almost a hundred hours away traveling in hyperspace, so Hux supposes it will be at least two weeks before they see each other again. Hux watches him while they walk side by side to Ren’s vessel. It’ll leave to meet another Star Destroyer, where he will meet his six student knights, or companions, however that works.

He stops before turning the corner to the hangar.

Ren also stops, looks at him. Hux for a moment would like to see his expression behind the frozen mask.

“Kill as many of them as you can,” he says looking at him, “and come back,” he says turning ahead.

Ren is still looking at him, as always.

“I thought you’d said it wouldn’t sadden you to know I died far away.”

Hux laughs, he feels his face relax a little.

“I wouldn’t be sad, Ren,” he says absolutely sincere. “After all I’ve had to bear from you, I hope to be the one who kills you. If you are assassinated, it wouldn’t be as gratifying.”

Ren, or his helmet, emits a sound of reproach, like a snort.

“We shouldn’t kill each other,” he says with his quarrelling, overbearing voice. “You were the one who said we were allies.”

“We are, Ren, and you’re useful right now, in your way.” Hux looks at him again. He feels cornered by thin air. “But if the Supreme Leader sends you away, I won’t be moved. Go ahead and destroy a ship under somebody else’s command.”

Ren turns, starts to walk again.

“Don’t wait for anything else Ren, I’m not fond of you,” Hux says, all dignity, _I hate you_ , thinks staring at his back thinking of shooting him again, of how much fun it would be, so as not to be thinking of anything else.

Ren doesn’t stop, but in the corner turns around again and says, “I’m aware,” with his plain shit eating voice, and Hux feels a little sick, like his head isn’t big enough for his _head_ , it feels heavy on his shoulders. A bittersweet taste is in his mouth; he forces himself to walk.

Hux hears him echoing inside his skull. Ren saying the words with that foreign, clear sound of his voice; _You do not hoard hate only,_ he says, _if that were the case you wouldn’t hide it from me._

Hux crosses his arms over his chest for lack of ideas on how to attempt violence against him right there. There’s almost a complete battalion marching along, the download of construction materials keeps all the hangars of the Finalizer busy at all times. He stops feeling like his brain beats like a heart.

“That’s an impression of yours,” he says, relieved. “I only keep to myself what I don’t want you to know about Snoke.”

And he shouldn’t have said that, but he was under attack. Ren watches him for a moment and seems to boil right there. His shoulders shake a little. The light pales when it touches him.

But he turns around again, walks slower, his ship is thirty meters away, Hux speaks out of curiosity.

“Who are they?”

“The Knigths of Ren,” he answers. Hux regrets asking. Truth is he doesn’t know what he expected besides a dense barrier of childish sarcasm.

Then he considers something he never considered before.

“This is personal request,” Hux says. The helmet turns to him, the air rarefied. “Do not have vain _mercy_ , Kylo.”

Hux turns around, starts walking at once, doesn’t look back, not even when he hears that metallic voice.

“I won’t,” it says to him. “Make sure to not build anything beyond the fifteenth sector.”

Hux only looks back after he’s in the other hangar, where the ship that’ll take him back down to the moon waits for him, and that’s only because he’s looking for the co-pilot.

He keeps feeling Kylo Ren on top of him, like a blanket that blocks the light of the morning, for a little more than half an hour; then he disappears, for the first time in almost a year.

Hux called him Kylo because, for some reason, it seemed impersonal to call him Ren when there where another six Rens on base.

He regrets it a little.                                                                                                               

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's over, the hate overwhelmed my reason, with my time I'm compromised.  
> And love, left flying out of the window, to where it has no enemies.  
> And now, I am at war with everything around me, I need no motive.  
> And I am! Master of contradiction, expert on breaking the prohibited.
> 
> Extremoduro, Segundo Movimiento (second movement).


	6. The Force III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I come from the dark side with references.
> 
> This whole chapter it’s basically a big reference to The Force Unleashed, a star wars game. The droid Hux fights, Prox, appears in the game, it can impersonate enemies for you to train, it can be Darth Vader or Darth Maul, anyone really, cool.
> 
> Also, this whole deal with Kylo being stronger in the dark side after murdering comes from the game as well. In the game one plays the role of a sith lord, every time you kill someone you become stronger. Also, during battle is likely you can find a Sith hologram, if you pick it up you become infinitely strong, but only for a while. The Jedi hologram are usually long term benefits, but aren’t as useful as being invincible in battle for a minute or so. Yeah, I kind of based Kylo’s dark side trance after killing on that, he becomes stronger and more connected, but it only lasts a while.
> 
> Now, this is the only chapter I really changed while translating, because I wrote Violence as a whole before TLJ came out, so I didn't know Hux and Phasma had killed Brendol Hux (aka Hux's father). I changed what I wrote to respect canon and because I really liked that for Hux's characterization. The scene with Karasu I wrote here was initially a chat with his father, but now it isn't haha. Also, Karasu means crow in Japanese, you'll know what I mean.
> 
> Thank you for everything, UP2L8 beta read me. [This is my tumblr.](https://gryffindornight.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Kylo, meditation & me are three.
> 
> Yo-ho hearties.

**The Force III**

 

 

“To meditate on death is to meditate in advance on freedom, and who learns to die has unlearned to serve.”

P.M.

 

 

A month goes by, not even the Supreme Leader notifies him of anything, so he doesn’t know if Ren is dead. He supposes Ren isn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe Hux expects him not to be, a little bit.

 

 

 

 

 

Two months go by. Hux has built up to sector thirteen and everything is moving along better than ever. It’s like a fantasy made reality. Every morning he wakes up and sees the suns rise in the east behind the mountain ranges, reflected light on the snowflakes, shining crisply yellow when he watches it through the whisky he has as his first act of the day since a week ago.

Most of the complex is already built; the deeper levels where the energy of the stars will be stored are done. Underneath his feet is the change of billions of lives. He rejoices. It isn’t enough to make him smile.

Many things failed at the beginning, but lately everything seems under control. There hasn’t been a single unforeseen avalanche in a month and a half; he hasn’t had to ask for extraordinary repairs on the moon or the ship; the werewolves do not show signs of rebellion. A new stormtrooper unit arrived a couple of days ago. With a whole bunch of new FNs, Phasma is highly pleased.

Everything is fine.

Hux opens the file with the Starkiller blueprints and looks at them again. He’s not really looking. He knows them from memory, but this is a habit he’s acquired to facilitate his thought processes, like opening the fridge when one already knows what’s inside.

After sector fifteen, the propulsion engines are the next phase of construction, then the main cannon. There’s still a little more than half the work to be done. Suddenly he isn’t feeling as rested anymore, and that’s because he’s slept barely five hours in the last two days.

When he goes to shave, Hux wonders how long it’s been since he didn’t have circles under his eyes, and decides to ignore it. Big goals require big sacrifices. He will have time to sleep later, when he dies of old age.

That day an unexpected ship lands in the less active hangar of the Finalizer, and Hux is notified while he comes up from the morning check on the drilling sites.

With little commotion he asks himself if it’s the lack of sleep what makes him uninterested with the possibility of having to murder whoever came to his ship. He stretches his arms, asks Phasma with a quiet voice what the hell does it mean that a ship is here that’s not supposed to be here.

In the background he hears voices before the Captain answers with her mechanical tone. “General, the crew have assured me that they bring an errand from your father.” She says it plainly, so much so that it’s a little funny.

It must be how tired he is. He laughs.

“It’s been a year again,” he says. “I invite you for a drink, Phasma.”

“It’s been a year again, sir,” she says, impassive, assassin. “Let’s talk after the shift is over, then.”

 

 

 

 

 

Karasu is on the ship, because he doesn’t ever come out of it. Sitting on his pilot chair he points at Hux with his middle finger in a very rude fashion when he sees him.

“Take that demon with you, Armitage. I have no time to fix everything it destroys on its way.”

How did Kylo Ren ever end up in the new Academy of the First Order, Hux wonders. And why didn’t Snoke tell him he was returning; he doesn’t understand. He feels lost. Karasu looks older than Hux remembers; he’s one of the few survivor of Arkanis, therefore Karasu has known him since Hux was a child. The pilot had already been working with Brendol Hux when Armitage was born. The mention of his given name is confusing as well; it’s like he hadn’t thought it to himself.

“Oh,” he says a little late, and Karasu stares with interest. “Yeah, I know, it’s insufferable.”

“Is everything in order, General?”

“Everything’s fine, crow,” Hux says to break formality, and also because he wants to sleep. He’s way too tired to deal with Ren. “I’m not pleased to take charge though. Where is he?”

Karasu looks at him with open curiosity. “Behind you,” he says.

Hux wonders how tired he must be to not  _ feel him _ , and it’s only when he turns around that embarrassment fills him. Millicent watches him with huge eyes, sitting on top of the shelves above the pilot pit, apparently suffering from boredom.

“I never heard you speak ill of that cat before, I thought it was the only thing you loved in life.”

“I’m afraid I misunderstood,” says Hux without turning around. He feels a red shame. He’s angry.

“You look tired,” Karasu says. “Do you know what day is today?”

“Seven years ago my father died,” says Hux, at ease.

Karasu laughs, a rich laugh, contagious. “Cardinal told me everything the day the new regiment of FNs we sent graduated,” and Hux turns at the mention of the captain, in whom he trusts. Karasu points at him with the middle finger again, just as rude. “You killed you father, you and that tall, blond woman.”

“Yes” Hux says. He expects to toast with Phasma about it tonight.

Karasu smiles at him with approval.

“Good boy, Armitage,” he says. “He was a shit hole. I met your mother.”

 

 

 

 

 

Millicent curls like a ball above the line of the back of his chair, just over the shoulders of his coat. Hux hears vibrant purring all the time he writes memos and attends unimportant messages from the constructors. When he’s done his head hurts a little. He’s checking the ledger books for budget discrepancies and decides he deserves a whisky and a cigarette. It seems he will barely sleep again.

Phasma announces her arrival and Hux lets her in. She herself arranges a drink without speaking, removes her helmet and puts it on the table. Her blonde hair is a little tousled. She looks fierce and huge, the glass half full in her gloved hand. She didn’t remove the armor to come, so she’s still busy, though her shift was over hours ago.

She also has dark circles under her eyes.

“Dead for good he is,” she says, “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” says Hux.

They have three shots in silence and then she sits and tells him that earlier today when she went to pay for materials at the Wobani ships, there was a problem with the fund transfer and she had to resubmit it.

“I checked the budget account and something isn’t right,” she says, and pours another rum.

Money is missing. It doesn’t take Hux long to calculate how much, and he isn’t terribly worried, but three whiskies in and watching Millicent’s red fur, he vaguely wonders if he may have forgotten to register some expense. Then he shakes his head. He doesn’t believe he has ever in his life been so tired for his diligence to lapse. Suddenly he isn’t in a good mood. He stretches his legs and with notorious annoyance starts to track down the lost money.

Hux is getting drunk when two hours later Phasma finds the hole in the account books they are looking for. In front of them there’s an open file with little green numbers and little white words.

More or less three months ago the irregularity was incurred, Hux concludes. It’s a long time after his shift when he summons the treasurer to check who authorized the expenditure and in what it was invested. True, is he is only being curious at this point. It’s obvious that Ren made the payment, and Hux wonders why he didn’t report it.

“Sure thing it was Ren,” Phasma says. “You should stop smoking,” she also says, wrinkling her nose.

Phasma and her resistant lungs. Hux leaves her to the trooper training program, even though it was him who designed it. They can go and run marathons. Hux wants another cigarette. And to shoot something.

Ren, maybe. Where is Ren.

Hux lights up another cigarette only to bother her. Phasma laughs.

“Sir,” says the blue hologram of Abdul, the treasurer. Hux turns to look bitterly. “I think we need Captain Phasma.”

Phasma puts on the helmet so fast, and Hux watches it happen so rawly that he realizes he’s drunk.

He falls asleep in front of the screen.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s Phasma’s hologram what wakes him up, almost an hour later, speaking with her best composed voice.  Hux knows her from many headaches, and he knows she’s upset.

She tells him that due to the  _ irregular behaviour  _ of some troopers and three officers, it took her longer than expected to find the source of the trouble. Then she sends him a couple of documents. Hux opens them halfway through a yawn. His eyes are heavy, stinging a little. His joints are bothering him. He feels drunk the wrong way, and his mouth tastes sour.

Millicent is purring again when Hux discovers that they repaired Ren’s room in the Finalizer, corner to corner.

To be clear, fully reconstructed it exactly the same as it was before. Hux remains there, looking at blueprints and pictures, the authorized payments for materials, the absence of digital signature therefore meaning Ren’s plain direct order. Hux is about to fall sleep again when Millicent climbs to his lap, and out of curiosity he details on the date of one of the routine informs - that for no apparent reason weren’t reported.

Wasn’t that the day of the celebration which marked the beginning of construction?

Hux falls sleep thinking of Anjing Hutan, the girl with pointy teeth that so candidly let him fuck her and asked for it. He remembers her in a sort of gray scale way, without emotion; he remembers her, thinking of the ten condoms and twenty little lubricant tubes he picked up from her purse after killing her. And after Ren left his room angry and reprehended, to destroy the newly built command complex of the moon.

 

 

 

 

 

He wakes up feeling his stomach burn. His neck is stiff, and Millicent’s claws are stabbing his thighs. He shakes quietly, and cannot help but laugh after processing again the date he reads in the file that’s still open in front of him.

The intricate act of hiding it is absurd. He thinks it is what gives it away.

If this were unrelated to him, Ren wouldn’t have had any reason to hide the fact that he destroyed his room. It isn’t as if he hadn’t destroyed three quarters of the ship at some point. But the act of hiding it is clear evidence.

If he hadn’t hidden it, Hux would’ve probably thought Ren destroyed his room after realising the imprudence of the trooper who spoke too much to Anjing that night about the Starkiller.

But by hiding it, and Hux lights a cigarette to not drink whisky today, it remains there, implicit, that Ren destroyed it because of something that shamed him. He breathes out the smoke, not feeling rested. He thinks Ren was jealous; it grants him a satisfaction he doesn’t know where to place in his mind.

It isn’t as if Hux hadn’t felt scrutinized while fucking that night. It isn’t as if he was surprised about it either. Ren was there on top, below, around him, since they met, until there were parsecs between them.

He doesn’t stand up until he finishes his smoke. He walks to the shower, and then he thinks of himself and his sense of safety while hiding his thoughts from Ren, and he realises how ironic the situation is.

So this is what Ren meant when he said that hiding so deliberately was even more evident that letting it all show.

He takes the coldest bath he can but he feels his face hot when he’s done. Hux cannot help but feel exposed; even if he’s sure Ren is too, now.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo thought that during the mission he’d have to murder, destroy, and eventually find and steal data referring to Skywalker.

Today, sixty-three days into the mission, he’s still onboard the Star Destroyer Conquer, training furiously with the six knights under his command - who have improved a lot, really - waiting for a definitive decision from Intelligence and the Supreme Leader.

He’s growing impatient, restless, desperate.

He’s dreamt every night for the last three weeks about members of the family of Ben Solo. He’s woken up sweating, pained just below his left ribs, and feeling his face burning like hell. He’s destroyed so many things on his path that his Master has called several times to direct his meditations, to ease him in his sea of anguish and anger.

“Lord Kylo Ren,” he’s said, “great tasks come towards you. Let the darkness of the Force be your companion”.

Kylo has tried to keep calm, figuratively. His meditations leave him with his mouth dry, and give him headaches. One day Kylo struck one of his knights so hard he almost killed him.

“You should train harder,” Kylo told him, despite knowing that for the last month they have been training almost eight hours every cycle. They stop for daily meetings. Kylo feels them all in the Force, drained, sleepy.

Kylo memorizes impatiently the maps they give him. He reads without interest the files they send him. He foresees in the Force such restlessness that he feels empty inside, unable to tie his pieces together. He feels full of darkness and void. He’s bottled inside his mask while walking towards the meeting room of the Conquer and feels solitude.

He stops. What does Hux want to hide about his Master? He’s thought about it occasionally. He doesn’t want to dig deep into the venalities of the General’s mind. It’s just that every time he closes his eyes he thinks he can hear the engine of the Millennium Falcon, sees Han Solo and Chewbacca pressing buttons, screaming inappropriate things to one another in the cabin.

Kylo shakes his head, ignores superficialities, keeps walking towards a greater purpose.

That day they inform him that they will begin the trip to Chandrila. A woman with a beard and long neck explains the anatomical details of the most common race of warriors inhabiting the planet where their objective is located. Kylo hears nothing; the Force will guide him. What could Hux think about the Supreme Leader that he shouldn’t know?

He tightens his fists. They ask him if he’s alright.  _ I was thinking stupidities,  _ he tells himself. He feels sparse. The truth is that he wouldn’t mind killing everyone present. It’s like he is uncomfortable in his own skin.

 

 

 

 

 

Even if there’s no time for pleasure, Hux makes sure to spar at least twice a week. Military discipline demands it, and because an officer of high rank who cannot respond properly during a fight is simply an imbecile.

Hux likes Prox. It is an holodroid specially designed for personification of entertained enemies for sparing purposes. Hux has fought famous troopers, high ranks, and one day he even fought a younger version of his father.

Today the droid makes Hux fight against himself. Hux laughs. He has to give programming credit when creating software with personalities. Many droids are even  _ funny. _

Hux fights against Hux until blood stains the sleeveless white shirt he’s wearing from a blow the other Hux lands on his nose. After that he gets so infuriated he almost disables the droid that personifies him. Hux has his knuckles scrapped and a little purple. He stands up and dries the sweat off his forehead with his forearm.

“Go get yourself repaired,” says Hux while he leaves.

The droid answers him. “I’m not the one who needs it.” With his own voice.

It drains a smile off him. Hux likes the sound of his own voice.

 

 

 

 

Even though he’s beaten from head to toe and hasn’t slept a proper eight hours in almost a week, Hux stretches his arms above his head and decides he will finish that novel about the Jedi he has there waiting since days ago. He’s sure that much of the material is fantasy, but he’s also sure there are aspects that are based on reality, so he reads about meditation with much tiredness and without brushing his hair after the shower.

It makes him curious. He’s sure Ren meditates every day. He’s not sure how to explain what he knows, but he remembers the day Ren discovered the moon and the hair of his arms stands on end. He still remembers the intimacy of being observed from every corner, from the roof and from underneath his feet. There was a moment of hopelessness when he felt Ren was in the air he was breathing and an overwhelming sensation invaded him. Hux saw him enter the bridge afterwards to order them to stop the ship.

He finishes the novel and straightens on his bed. He asks the computer to consult on meditation, and reads for a while with rising interest about the practice. It is done far and wide throughout the Galaxy. Distant tribes, religions, in different ways, in different postures, with similar anecdotes, and most of them with the intention of seeking truths by connection with an internal wisdom.

Hux doesn’t believe shit about what he reads, but before he sleeps, he sits up on his bed, and with mortification, he decides to try it just out of curiosity. Millicent comes to lie between his crossed legs, and Hux focuses, tries to think in something useful, at least.

 

 

 

 

 

The meantime of it isn’t particularly revealing.

It’s satisfactory, pure corporal pleasure. There are moments where he stops to laugh a little, it’s drunkening.

His saber leaves irregular cuts on the flesh, cauterizes unevenly, the crackling of the unstable crystal draws angrily painful patterns on what it touches. Kylo Ren doesn’t leave behind clean cuts, no, on his way a line of broken bleeding corpses extends, open in grotesque way, dripping blood, tissue, guts and miseries on the humid surface of the planet.

The plants are tinted by the bath of death while the seven advance. There’s a support group behind but they haven’t fired once. Kylo has his mask stained with blood and screams. He can hear the crack of bones under his grasp, the sparking of his saber that roars satisfied while the legs of his attacker roll, red and ripped with precisely torn trace, the muscles burst by force and not cut by the sword.

Cries fill his ears; he can taste the blood, metallic. He can see without commotion the pale green brains spread over the walls of the building they just entered. He blinks a couple of times. They are in the wide entrance hall on the first floor, with too many balconies surrounding it.

The six react faster than he thought they would. When Kylo orders them to go back they are already doing it, it’s just him in the middle; twenty-two life forms are pointing at him from the superior floors and his stomach feels empty.

He emits the sound of a caged animal when he hears them shoot, and in the time it takes for the bolts to reach him he laments he won’t get to kill them all more intimately. He almost wishes to be able to hear their moans, and feel the terror of each one. He would’ve liked to see his mask shining in the light of their eyes, to strike each and every one of them like he does right now: twisting on his ankles, on his knees, over one hand, over the long and wide axis of his body.

Kylo deflects as many as he can, ignores the others, dodges them and allows them to die in the ground and the columns.

They die so fast he feels vertigo, the voices of their minds flood him with the pain of their bodies, the agonizing beat of their flesh stalks him. Kylo feels another’s wounds in the neck, the legs, the abdomen, the head, the lungs, the shoulders. The pain is inevitable and the suffering a choice they all succumb to.

Reinforcements for the fallen arrive, and Kylo orders screaming so that nobody comes to aid him. Let them shoot, he thinks. Let them all die.

From the map he memorized, Kylo remembers this place. They agreed in some meeting where he was distracted, that one squad would stay to entertain the protectors of the apparent University, which is also the Center of Intelligence and Archive of the New Republic. The other squads would take the ventilation ducts and go up to the fourth floor.

Kylo can feel in the Force the urgent call of what they are looking for. None of his knights hesitate about going ahead. One of the officers of the squad that came behind watches him, dilated pupils, fear beating, like electricity going through her. When she leaves she seems relieved to have Kylo on her side.

Everyone that shoots at him dies, except one.

There’s a timid soldier, wearing a pilot uniform of the Resistance. He observes Kylo with cold dread while pointing a blaster at him, and the drops of sweat from his forehead roll into his eyes. Kylo feels in his tongue the burn and the sudden loneliness of the pilot as he acknowledges that he’s going to die right here, surrounded by dead strangers killed by their own shots.

The red shot the pilot aimed at Kylo’s heart vibrates, buzzes with its funeral hymn, just in the middle of them, stopped in the air.

Kylo doesn’t make an effort to feel him crumble. In the memory of the pilot is the far away planet where he comes from and the smile of General Organa when she wished him luck before saying goodbye to him that very same day. Kylo makes sure to turn everything to pain and doom inside him just to enjoy his death more closely.

He obtains then that transformation he was looking for. He can hear and smell the blood that sprang free from that throat hours after, in the middle of the richest sensation of invincibility he can recall to his mind the infinite despair, the most absolute hopelessness, the horror of tragedy, the slow, painful and bitter death of that sweaty unruffled boy.

The rest of the mission is just a thunderstorm of shattered bodies, a far away explosion, voices on the intercom leading the ships to pull back, congratulations. There are six black figures outside when Kylo comes out, in the Force they are cheerful, they are his Knights, they look to him.

Kylo allows it even when he knows it will hit his mask, it’ll have a new indent, a trace of his own internal transformation. Before he goes he makes sure to strangulate with the slight tightening of his fist the last guard that faces them and shot at him. He thinks he hears six laughs.

 

 

 

 

 

How big is the universe?

Infinite.

How many numbers exist?

Infinite.

A fascinating concept, ‘infinite’.  One can conceive of it at least. One can have a vague undefined idea, unlimited, untouchable, impossible to visualize, about infinite. But it stays there, a far away unreachable idea. It stays in the abstract, imperceptible, in what can be understood thanks to reason, and can be put into words but not in fact.

Infinite is a word that encloses things that cannot be enclosed, and that is most ironic.  In itself, the word  _ infinite  _ is enclosing, categorizing, naming the unnameable.

That’s because what’s infinite cannot be conceived, it actually has no end.

Perception is to feel - to see, to hear, to touch - and nobody can feel infinity.

Have we ever witnessed something infinite?

All we can conceive has a limit and an end. The Universe has been explored by different civilizations far and wide since ancient times from which memory is lost, and even if there’s consensus on the fact that discovering more and more will continue indefinitely, that fact remains overwhelming.

That space is perpetual, that the universe and the dimension we live in are unbounded.

However, even if the universe is infinite, it has always been measured and encompassed. Every day there is a telescope that sees a little farther beyond, a ship that can go a bit further, an eye that catches the glimmer of a star centuries dead.

And that’s because what’s infinite is like everything else we perceive: it is measurable. Even the idea that infinity is immeasurable is rejected, because from our perspective there is nothing immeasurable. What we conceive as the all is, and will forever be, what we can perceive of it.

The universe, infinity, is what we can see, what we can categorize and name.

Forever, infinity, that’s the all, quantifiable.

Reason puts ideas inside of frames, reason explains, enumerates, arranges in chronological order. Reason quantifies and qualifies, sets everything on its path into relation, in measurement, explanation, circumstance. Reason gives in to its own devices, like language and belief, the capacity of enclosing that which itself cannot be enclosed. Reason gives name, definition, tangibility, accessibility, to what it cannot understand.

How does thinking work?

Even though the universe doesn’t have an end we can comprehend, even though the cosmos perpetuates, as long as all lives exist and perceive it, the reason for which they can be capable of, will try to measure, explain, add color, texture, an image, a map traceable with the eyes and sailed in hyperspace.

Everything that exists will be, until reason comes to an end, an all that has been measured. Because if it isn’t that’s because nobody has seen it, or has felt it in anyway, nobody has experienced it. There always will be something else to discover, to conquer, to know, to comprehend, to explain, and once that happens it will be something to control.

We will not know the universe completely; there will always be more, it’s a sentence.

Reason is sentenced to the absolute of things, to the all, the measure.

The all will be  _ all we know _ , the all is what with the curse of time and the advance of knowledge we are capable of accounting for and explaining, and that will always be measured because we measure it all.

We are sentenced to the absolute because infinity is a concept and no more, it’s irrelevant to practical reality. What’s useful is what we can be aware of, and that is limited. Therefor knowledge of infinity is a sentence to the absolute.

What a peculiar sensation.

It’s like, suddenly, all he can feel is there for one motive: to be perceived. It’s like, suddenly, everything he perceives could be so for one reason: the awareness, the consciousness he has of existing.

His awareness of it all advances, his consciousness advances.

Hux opens his eyes feeling there’s no distinction between his skin and the cloth underneath his body, for an eternity that lasts just a second. The all is one sensation that has rhythm. It moves, vibrates.

It transits.

Is this the Force?

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo Ren isn’t sure when it started exactly, because when he discovers himself, he is, as if he has always been, in complete paroxysm.

Time drips off his fingers like blood drips from his helmet. He’s reclining in the chair of the ship that will take them to the Star Destroyer Conquer and he’s burning like the heart of the star that produced the iron of these walls; he’s pulling out of the atmosphere with the first ship that ever came out of this planet; he’s in the mud and feels the steps of ten thousand million inhabitants of that world; he’s in the first place he ever stepped on with his new boots; he’s looking out at the stars as he did that day on the Finalizer; he’s flouting out in space among the dust, fuel stains, sand grains, tears; he’s on Tatooine being built by jawas; he’s beyond the outer border when the First Order takes possession of a ship; he’s passing in front of Kylo Ren right now and he’s being Kylo Ren watching a cleaning droid that just threw to space the rest of a trash compressor.

_ You’re absolute, you keep discovering more and more and more and more. _

Kylo Ren doesn’t speak a word in hours because to be all is per say almost obligatorily to be the third person narrator. To be omniscient implies to be in everything, that something else which makes the reunion of the parts  _ the all, _ to be conscious.

Overwhelming like nothing else.

What he can feel may be finite, but he’s unbounded.

When he comes down enough to eat, being the shadow, the air, the very food and the whole ship; he thinks that this whole torrent of sensibility can be focused on what puts him out of balance when he isn’t as connected with the Force as he is right now.

And so, deeply interested in the raisins and the cereals they serve him, submersed in constant rediscovery of his own atoms and their path through all that exists, Kylo Ren starts to look for a reflection that allows him to reach even higher harmony that this one.

He can feel the strength like a river flow through him, he feels inside out, more sensitive than ever.

He forces himself to concentrate his analysis on himself, and when he’s locked up in his room he finds such deep connection with the Force that it’s linked with his own blood, with the very energy that conforms him.

_ You’re will _ . From the supremacy of his ecstasy and with no vain reason to self-glorify, Kylo finds that it was the Force itself which allowed and forged his existence in the first place, consciously and premeditated. The dark side of the Force propagated the concentration of medichlorians that were to Darth Vader what a biological father is. Everything he’s thankful for, all that lets him bask in the high joys of the dark side of the Force comes from his grandfather, Darth Vader.

His guts twists, but Kylo Ren isn’t inside that body, or better, not only inside that body.

_ You’re everything that’s happening now, before, and after. _

His family isn’t just his grandfather, but the misfortune of his children that, same as Darth Vader, were confused by the easy excuse of light. Everything he despises of himself, everything that takes him away from basking in the high joys of the dark side of the Force, comes from Anakin Skywalker, Ben Solo’s grandfather. The immediate family of the one he once was and his grandfather are a constant torment, a pull he wants to reject, it’s like a  _ superior force. _

There’s always a body that pulls, and another one that’s pulled.

Who is greater? Who is stronger? Who should be the body that pulls?  _ Are you going to allow light pull you in like the others? _

The Force is strong with Kylo Ren, in this very moment, with him more than with anybody in the Galaxy. Luke Skywalker, who was one with the Force, knew this and his light blinked. He ran, waiting for some spark to help him. Kylo Ren knows that they expect to light up with a candle the vast and heavy darkness of the immeasurable immensity. Kylo Ren knows all candles sooner or later burn all their wax.

Darkness is constant. Darkness is stronger because it can wait patiently and consume everything at the end. The body that pulls always, at the end, is the same one, the same doom. If darkness didn’t achieve it through Darth Vader, the job can be finished by his grandson. He can be the black mantle covering the ends of the universe.

He won’t be defeated and seduced for what the father of his mother fell. Kylo Ren is stronger.

His agony of the light will end, he will consume it, absorb it, convert it.

Death isn’t an end. Kylo Ren killed almost seventy people three days ago, and yet, he’s never seen anyone  _ end _ . The dead don’t stop existing; they become something else. The sparks of light in their eyes are now the tender dark. Matter isn’t destroyed or constructed. Matter transforms. That’s why the act of  _ killing _ is never the act of ending, but the act of giving a new beginning. The Force is cyclic, has rhythm, moves forward, is born from death, continues.

This is why Kylo isn’t afraid of bringing transformation to whatever comes on his path, because he isn’t altering the flow of the Force in a wrong way, he’s only continuing it.

It’s senseless to think the natural state of water is the quietude, natural it is, also, that the water boils and flows in mighty rivers. It is not chaos, it is not disorder, it’s a state that transforms itself. Like the Force, which isn’t just gentle and impassive, the Force is all the violence of the universe as well.

All life is part of a fierce machine that bolts with no brakes towards its end. Existence is the temple of death. The ant and the sun are born to die again. Kylo Ren can hear from the abrupt light speed jump the piercing scream of everything that is dying in the Galaxy. Death is incredibly beautiful. Without it there would be neither evolution nor change. It isn’t an end but a step forward.

The Force isn’t just the love that creates life, it is also the hate and resentment that makes civilizations fall, that impulses war. The Force isn’t just the light, the Force is also the darkness that extends beyond and further ahead of the light that the greatest sun can give. The Force, so merciful and full of love, is equally woven with hate and indifference; both parts are related.

That’s why Kylo Ren owes everything he loves to his grandfather and owes everything he hates to him as well.

He’s discovered in joy the link and complicity with the Force he shares with his grandfather, with thousands of Sith before him and with the primary Knights of Ren with whom Kylo shares purpose and power. It’s that same love and tranquility what clears him to dive into the pain that drains his power daily, the hate he doesn’t ignore with the firm finality of using the best of it’s torrent of power, so dark and so delightfully satisfactory.

Ah, the hate.                                                                                                                          

Kylo Ren, from the deep end of his guts, hates.

Hates them all, Anakin and Obi Wan, Chewbacca and Luke, Leia and Han. Hates their droids, their friends and allies, hates their idiotic dysfunctional system, hates their political tradition, their religious beliefs, their ethical reflections, their double moral, hates their limitations, hates that they abandoned him when he observed from far the flaws they had and they didn’t know how to and hadn’t wanted to listen.

He hates them because he grew full of questions, empty of answers, unsettled, feeling lost and alone in a world that moved too fast, in a family that everyone knew and that in its might didn’t have time for itself. He hates them because when he was at his loneliest and the angriest, his mother looked at him with precaution and his father whispered, when he thought he wouldn’t be heard, that there was something turbulent and evil in his eyes.

Who, then, is the evil one?

Hates them, he always doubted and the attention they gave to his thoughts was to send him far, he hates them because Luke treated him with well hidden distrust all the time, like he was expecting any false step to stare at him with disappointment, to accuse him of not being what they all expected. Because Kylo Ren is not what that shit family expected, isn’t what that group of ignorants wanted of him.

Kylo, more sensitive than he could control, always knew that something inside him was just different, plainly strong, indomitable, tacit.

His Master brought him understanding, Ben Solo was fifteen years old; his meditation lets him go back to the exact moment.

What they had taught him all his life was limited, right and wrong were suddenly a drawing made with the fingers and not the intricate art piece he always conceived. He hates them because when he wanted to show them with glory the truths he had found they judged him lost, pointed at him with their fingers and stated that, finally, the worst had happened. Kylo Ren had to kill almost everyone inside the Jedi temple because none of them were able to see reason in darkness, because they all preferred a trimmed part of the infinite, what made them comfortable and nothing else, nobody questioned the establishment.

And he shouldn’t feel pain about it, the beating on the Force that hosted them didn’t disappear, it moved to other places, made him stronger, continued its infinite course. That’s why Kylo keeps the ashes of his dead, to watch them in meditation and awe in the constant change; it’s the living moving memory of the flow of the Force.

He cannot allow light to seduce him, the temptation of coming back to his family for the love he has for them can’t cloud his judgment. Hatred isn’t inside him to destroy without course but to point at what he must transform.

And he must transform what Ben Solo’s family means.

He must avenge what they caused him, because vengeance is a confession of agony. Even if he’s refused, Kylo Ren has suffered because of them.

If they do not accept the reality of the dark side, then let it be death. They won’t go away and it should not be painful. They will transform with the flow of the Force and it will allow them to see the big picture of the cosmos, the all, the eternal darkness.

Kylo discovers that he’s willing to be merciful. He knows what he has to do and he will find the strength to do it when the Force guides him to that moment.

He will kill them, each of them. If he has to, if he discovers hatred within them he can transform that.

If they do not come to reason, he will. He will find high ecstasy in it. If that’s what is causing him pain, it will then cause him pleasure. Kylo finds himself almost surprised at the simplicity of his reflection. If the light disturbs his rest, he needs only to turn it into darkness, and he’ll find ease.

When Kylo falls sleep he dreams of Han Solo, and never once during the dream does he hate him.

 

 

 

 

 

After stretching his legs and rotating his ankles - that hurt like a thousand demons because he stayed seated with his legs crossed for too long. Hux lays down with the overwhelming sensation of being one with everything around him. Meditation was the strangest thing he’s done, and even if he’s not sure how he has come to feel this way, he’s satisfied, relaxed inside out, rested even without sleep.

He falls asleep faster than usual. He realises this because Millicent wakes him up almost an hour later and he’s surprised to be asleep at this hour. He’s usually reading something, studying something, staring without blinking at the Starkiller blueprints.

He gets comfy, falls sleep again.

Since Millicent came home they have slept together, Millicent on top of him, mostly on top of Hux’s neck. It would be fine, because Hux isn’t really annoyed. He is really fond of the cat, but sometimes the weight on his neck doesn’t let him breath easily. He wakes up three more times to relocate Millicent to other place before he can sleep with complete tranquility.

He dreams with Kylo Ren that night, dreams to take off his helmet.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo spends a whole week in the deepest meditation of his life.

There’s nothing like the embrace of the darkness that accompanies him, holds him. Sometimes he doesn’t know he has his eyes open, sometimes he’s barely aware of walking, sitting, or training somewhere. All his acts are one single course of the Force and it’s so calming to be the All that there’s no real disturbance. In his meditation he can see the void between every one of his hairs, of his cells, of his particles, his atoms; and with that he can witness the connection of everything that exists.

The union is in the secret of the void, because everything is connected while the same time it all is a separate.

He knows he spends a week this way because one of the six tells him the date, and he finds that the universe, of which he is one, has moved.

Has transited.

He sees pure toasted yellow under the sun. He sees a broken, dismantled AT that echoes with the trace of an army of clones in the force. He sees the lightly pointed teeth of a woman cooking bread out of dehydrated dust. The sun sets and she uses a helmet that she wears every day nostalgia makes her think of home, even if she doesn’t remember it, even if she’s alone in the desert.

Vaguely, Kylo Ren wonders if there’s something around him that’s related to Jakku. There are many droids, and in general, a lot of space trash that comes and goes through that place. The Force is immense and connected as unconnected. Inside his mask the air is cleaner and there’s no need for sparks of light.

Above, everywhere, he tastes the reddish colour of the sunsets, the blood colored trace of the Order logo, the uneasy voracious flame that consume a forest in summer, the falling of the first leaves of autumn, the forgotten darkness of the day Hux came on board the Finalizer for the first time. His hair.

“Kylo,” says one of them, “we are in the 7G sector. The Starkiller is close.”

“I can feel it,” says Kylo, and it’s strange but it feels a little like coming home.

 


	7. The stars' assassin II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've come from the dark for the last time. 
> 
> This is it, I'm very thankful to everyone who read and commented, I hope the conclusion to be fulfilling, all kinds of things happened lately and I'm glad I'm finally done with this translation, I feel I've improved in many ways, Violence in both languages has left me a lot. This was a story about being angry.
> 
> Now, when I've read it again I've realized how much I made Hux Force sensitive, not like Kylo, but sensitive anyway, all the thing with the thoughts... haha. This must be the lighter chapter of them all, when I read it I feel the scenes are less thoughts and more action. Initially I wanted to post this on three chapters, but I felt they were too long, so I ended up dividing it in seven, this one feels odd, but maybe it's just because it's the last.
> 
> UP2L8 beta read me, I can't say thank you enough. 
> 
> Kylo Ren, meditation & me are three, I have much more Kylo Ren music I'd like to share, but for the sake of the end I'll recommend today ['Closure'](https://youtu.be/XxwPjDz1sKE) by Opeth. 
> 
> I'll be in the dark side, see you there.

**The Stars' Assassin II**

 

 

 

 

“In the rise of the sun, I’m longing for the darkness.”

Closure, Opeth.

 

 

 

 

 

Ren simply took too long. There was no way for Hux to stop the building of the Starkiller now; every day is money and time lost. In the name of pure common sense Hux isn’t going to delay anything. Even if Ren said it just before he left.

Hux doesn’t care about Ren, and Hux betrays himself every night when he thinks of Ren’s mouth, and comes thinking of freckles and sweat. Ren has to be alive, out there somewhere, destroying something.

After coming he meditates himself to sleep, because there’s nothing better for having a good night cycle, simple as that.

A week after he starts to meditate he decides, in the middle of his thoughts, that Ren in fact has to be out there somewhere, and he makes the mistake of meditating with that in mind.

It’s a mistake because he is drawn to a feeling, to black stretching past the confines and distant light of suns. Beyond, he feels a red beat, uneven. Unsettlement. Unlimited fear. Ren, angry, saturated in an ominous way, huge. It’s a enormous feeling. Hux opens his eyes, refuses to believe.

He questions himself for the eighth time, on the eighth day he meditates, if this whole thing isn’t just his imagination.

Then he feels seen, he feels tasted and watched inside out, he feels inspected, broken.

Hux opens his eyes and breathes with no rhythm. Millicent is curling between his legs and Hux feels his heart in his throat, beating in his ears. Could it be possible? Suddenly he feels that pressure in his head and inside his body that makes him want to twist his spine, scream a little, insult Ren for intruding.

“General.”

Is that Phasma’s voice?

“General,” it says again.  Hux straightens. His shift ended more than forty minutes ago.

“Captain, Phasma, what is happening?”

“He’s here,” she says.

And it isn’t necessary that she elaborate, because Hux feels himself shaken from inside,  _ of course he’s here _ , the shadows looks bigger. Inside his soundproofed room he believes he can hear the rumble of the Silencer landing in the hangar, he believes he can hear Ren stepping aboard the ship again.

 

 

 

 

 

They don’t get to see each other. When Hux’s shift begins, he has to go down to the moon. Going up to the Finalizer had been due to a mishap with the technicians. His place is on the surface, where he can make sure everything advances as it should.

Today they begin building in sector seventeen.

He hasn’t heard Ren’s voice since he returned, even though he feels him rummaging like he hadn’t in months. He didn’t miss him. It was only something usual that stopped being there, and now Hux can point at it with a finger and say, “Ah, yeah, look at him again, being a child with his power as always.” He knows Ren is criticizing that they built beyond his recommendation, but there’s nothing to do about it. Hux had to keep going.

From the surface of the moon the Finalizer looks like a sharp, long stain. Hux wonders when the talk that has been sleeping between them for weeks will finally come. He knows Ren is listening, somehow he feels that Ren has listened to everything that has happened since he left.

Hux admits much of it, but it isn’t at all sweet.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s happening again. Kylo wants to sit on his bed and think that it’s due to the sudden change of space, but it’s stupid of him. A few hours ago he was the  _ whole universe _ . What’s happening is that he has found a conclusion, but not a solution.

Kylo goes two hours thinking about how someone else controlling his own will would be absurd, how if that were the case he’d surely notice. He’d  _ notice _ . Hux combs his hair backwards for the last time and adjusts his belt. The induced meditation is ending, this is the bitter moment.

This is the moment, the moment he hides even from himself. Kylo shuts his eyes tight, takes a deep breath, decides to give this awful time a rush.

Snoke is a son of a bitch; surely he’s manipulating him. Surely he’s insecure because Kylo hasn’t done exactly as ordered, and at the same time because he has. He sees the moment come, and Kylo will kill them, but until it is done . . .

He hasn’t killed them, so Kylo will doubt every time. Kylo will doubt in front of his father, and will doubt looking at his mother, and Snoke knows, his Master knows, but Kylo has to fall, for just moment, into doubt.

So what if there’s politics behind all this? And so what if many will die? Isn’t that how the Force guides me? Am I misreading the Force? Is my Master deceiving me? Am I at war with everything around me with no motives, for no reason? Will I have to kill Snoke? Will that fix the mistake? What mistake?

What if all is a mistake? Am I being deceived by the darkness?

And what if I  _ am _ being deceived by the darkness?

Is this the darkness?

I can’t see it.

I can’t see anything; I wish my mother could help me.

Kylo comes back to himself, he’s been nine hours in his room in the Finalizer and time is starting to make sense again. Here, where everything he feels fades away, the only distraction is Hux. Hux, who is on the surface: red hair like the dawn of the moon, he feels and is cold, he’s upset, stressed; Hux is a rough man, flexible of body but not of the soul. Hux is not hiding as he used to, which is disturbing.

Kylo isn’t surprised by Hux meditating, definitely not surprised that he stopped when he was discovered during the night cycle, and now pretends, while working with his cold, technical rhythm, that he can ignore him like he did before.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo trains again with his chosen squad. In his absence the weapons he designed had arrived and Nines is holding the first prototype once they meet.

None of the troopers wants to take his blows. Just when he’s getting angry Phasma shows up and comments that she herself made checks on the math and that she’s sure the weapon will withstand the strike of the saber.

Phasma turns out to be the most formidable sparring partner Kylo has found in years.

It’s almost enough to forget that Hux built two sectors beyond what he should have.

 

 

 

 

 

After training Kylo decides to call Hux. Not because formality dictates that he should let him know visually that he’s on his command post again since he arrived cycles ago, and certainly not to show respect by not simply getting into his head.

It is that Kylo wants to say it out loud.

“One of your men could destroy the whole planet with a single, well placed shot to the thermal oscillator.”

Hux watches him, cold hologram, hair combed as usual.

“That’s an overstatement,” he says, clearly offended.

“It’s an understatement,” Kylo corrects.

“There’s too much security around the thermal oscillator. If we were, hypothetically, atta-“

“We will surely be attacked.”

“Then be useful and defend the base.”

“I am useful. I could be more so if I didn’t have to defend against mistakes that could’ve been avoided from the start.”

“Ren, fuck off.”

They observe each other. Kylo can smell the shaving cream and cologne even though he’s locked up in his room in the Finalizer. If he stretches his hand a little, he thinks he could feel the orange fur of the cat between his fingers, and he’s wearing gloves.

“Wasn’t it Kylo, now?” he reproaches. “Why are you calling me Ren again?” and it is the least important part of everything, but Hux widens his eyes and Kylo guesses that if Hux were a different man, his proof of embarrassment would be a blush where he only shows honest annoyance.

“It took you too long. I couldn’t stop the building. You could’ve said something before you left.” Hux looks other way, frowns.

Kylo bickers, the sound his mask makes is discontinuous. “I was killing them all.” And it isn’t a justification, it’s a valid fact, it was his job, Hux told him to do it.

“Well done, now, if you excuse me,” and it seems he says it like that only for the disdain of not wanting to be excused in general. “I have the destiny of the Galaxy to control,” and he looks ahead again. “Ren,” he resolves as a goodbye, and hangs up.

Kylo removes the mask, vaguely contemplates the ashes of his grandfather and wonders to himself if time is a spiral, in that a Death Star and a Starkiller should die for such similar mistakes.

He wonders what will become of Hux without his weapon to make him feel powerful.

 

 

 

 

 

Because of his own conclusion, Hux decides that it would be childish and obtuse to keep up what he believed to be discretion and dignity.

So he gives in. Walking towards the seventeenth sector he allows himself to think, without hiding it, that in his twisted way, it’s thanks to Ren that his interest in the Force made him meditate, which made him think of the All and the control of it in a way he had never contemplated before.

Ren is the movement of the air in the open, the gust of wind that dishevels his hair even though he applied wax on it after showering.   _ To control the Galaxy is only possible in the measure one can control one’s self _ , Ren thinks, but it is Hux who hears him, rumbling inside his head painfully,  _ control yourself, General. _

Hux insults him out loud because is he not the one who lost control and destroyed  _ another _ computer  _ today _ . Ren doesn’t intrude in his head for the rest of the cycle.

 

 

 

 

 

Against what Hux apparently desires, they talk.

When the night falls on the side of the moon where Hux is, usually there’s a bluish hologram of Ren in his room. Sometimes they discuss the construction, or they speak about the best training gym on the Finalizer, or even complain together about the food. For hours it seems they get along, but usually, as well, when they hang up they do it arguing.

Most of the time it is Ren, Hux says to himself.

He’s stopped blocking things from his mind, like Ren taught him to do, and he believes that in his way Ren has stopped denying interest as well. But that doesn’t mean he’s willing to endure him bringing up matters that are irrelevant, like Hux not calling him Kylo, like how he now knows when and how Hux meditates. They cannot talk about the Force as a study subject. Ren with his awful personality has to point out what Hux lets him see like it is  _ necessary. _

Hux thought that when he quit hiding what it seems they both thought of the other, it would be a kind of mutual agreement not to mention it. It isn’t like they are comfortable with it; he hoped they might begin to act like the war commanders they are, and well, be at  _ peace, _ even if just between them, even with Ren tearing apart the ship and Hux building an “easy to destroy” weapon.

But no.

Ren tells him that day, looking surprised, the bastard.

“So you were thinking of me while you fucked that woman.”

Hux doesn’t even say goodbye but cuts the communication at once.

Hux doesn’t understand what Ren wants with his superiority complex and his foolish need to mention what has already been admitted between them. To rejoice in it only serves his pride, and if there is one thing Hux is bad at, it’s feeding someone else’s pride. Sometimes he doesn’t even do it with the Supreme Leader.

Anyway, the end of the line comes the day Ren asks him with a frown why his Master called him to inform him that his moments of blind anger are affecting the budget of the Order.

“That’s because I add the invoices for what you damage to my daily reports of your behaviour.”

Ren makes a choked noise. He looks halfway between indignation and purely furious. Hux steps away from his computer out of precaution.

“No,” he says, “this is because I can see now what you hid and you’re ashamed.”

Hux looks at him without diminished repudiation. “No,” he answers. “Reporting on you is my duty.”

Ren half closes his eyes. “No,” he says again, “it’s shame. If you could know something similar you would also gloat to my face.”

Hux snorts. “No,” he insists forcefully, and he accents the word with a hand movement, “I don’t have to go around saying that I know why you destroyed your whole room, had it rebuilt and hid it all from me. Saying it doesn’t make me feel better, doesn’t make me feel bad, doesn’t make me feel anything. I just know it; it’s a fact.”

Ren opens his eyes so wide his anger is almost funny. Hux doesn’t feel much threatened lately.

“You,” Ren says, and the world vibrates under Hux feet, “of course you feel pleasure knowing that.”

“Don’t be a child, Ren.” Hux wonders if Ren is noticing that even though Hux mentioned it, he didn’t say the reason. He didn’t say, ‘You were jealous,’ like Ren would certainly have said.

They remain silent. Hux debates whether locking up everything he released would be a good idea. Then Ren moves and Hux turns to look at him again.

“You dreamt about me while I was gone,” Ren says. “I saw it when you meditated, looking for me. I saw it before I entered this solar system.” Hux breathes, a long-suffering tone about it. “You took my mask off in your dream,” Ren continues, and Hux looks away because he knows what comes next. He dreamt it himself. “And kissed me. You kissed me,” Ren finishes.

Hux is so sick of it. He’s not even embarrassed. He doesn’t even want to kill Ren anymore. He feels like having a drink and a cigarette. He passes a hand through his hair. He thinks that the next time Ren gets jealous he might as well reconstruct his room with the Force.

But all he says is, “Good night, Kylo,” and hangs up the call.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo stays there a moment longer than he needs to. Because, truth is, since Hux said it, he can feel the murmur of breathing from the officer, the one that revealed to Hux that Kylo had destroyed his own room. Standing up and stepping out the room, he thinks he can hear the words he said with the same voice he used to swear he would never tell anything at all.

Ah, then he said it to Phasma; it is right there written in his mind.

Kylo feels betrayed. Walking out towards the barracks he gets even angrier. He thinks of Hux calling him Kylo condescendingly, like he understands something Kylo doesn’t, and how could he, when Kylo can read him like one of his reports, from beginning to end, with his organized insults and numbered desires.

It’s terrible. He can’t stop thinking about him, Hux, with his red sideburns, his barely altered voice. With such pride he talks, says so many things without saying anything of what he thinks; and yet he says enough to accuse Kylo, anyway.

When he reaches the giant dorms where the technicians and low rank officers rest, he opens the door with a barked order and the computer allows him in. He turns on his saber once he’s inside and several of them jump out of bed half sleep, terrified.

And on top of a mattress wearing the grey generic pyjamas, the dilator looks at him with the terror of a victim awaiting death. Kylo reads there in his reptile yellow eyes his confession of guilt, hears it louder than any words.

Louder than any words.

Kylo gets so angry he stampedes out the barracks with the sword still on, not speaking, with the realization burning in his guts. Furious as always but determined not to break anything, because it cannot be his actions speaking to Hux louder than any words.

Hux bastard, that whoreson.

Hux with his blue eyes that give away so much, they stare at him, because Hux looks at him, through the hologram every time they speak, fixedly like he doesn’t want to stop seeing him, even if Kylo is wearing the mask, admitting everything.

But the line of his mouth is firm and his voice doesn’t tremble. “Ren,” he says, “Don’t be a child, Ren.”

And Kylo feels like a child, standing there in front of the open barracks door, the technicians crying with fear inside. Because how is it possible that this happens to him, to  _ him _ , when he can hear the faintest of thoughts. How can it go over his head, these sounds beyond words.

 

 

 

 

 

Hux is sure, with no Force needed, that Ren is twitching out of eagerness to come down to the moon and insult him face to face, maybe hurt him, maybe even stand there and see if Hux takes off his mask and kisses him. But Ren doesn’t come down, not that day, not the next one.

It’s maybe related to Hux not hiding anything, including that he holds no desire to speak to Ren unless their position of command compels him to.

Ren’s confession is his presence. Vaguely Hux wonders, on the seventh day, how it would be to feel him if he actually were Force sensitive. Ren is the whispering of Millicent’s steps and the clean smell of his underwear. Ren seems to be looking at him from under every piece of fruit he eats that morning.

Hux smokes a cigarette, and before killing it he wishes the Force not to be with Ren today, so he may be at peace. He desires it, but without saying it out loud because one of them has to be an adult about this.

Ren doesn’t leave. If anything, the shadows look even longer.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo has an Order to command as well, beyond what Hux believes with his petulant and tidy mandate. Kylo trains every day, three times a day, and meditates until his forehead feels weird and he stops feeling attached to his body. He meditates until he speaks with the memories of the inert walls, until the drilling on the moon sounds like lullabies and howls.

He destroys one thing or another, because he can’t help it, and because the crew of the ship can’t be without a limit for incompetence.

Kylo has changed thrice the rotation of sanitation troopers that come up to the command quarters; he’s not satisfied with his bathroom, and the floor of the hall guards the memory of the focused jog Hux did every time he went out to train hand to hand with his droid on the inferior levels. Kylo’s blood boils in his veins; he needs something to change.

He’s dreamt two nights in a row of a red thunderbolt that crosses the sky and Hux’s blue eyes enormous, an immense indescribable emotion in his gaze. He’s dreamt two nights in a row of Han Solo and his eyes bathed in red light, so much love that it hurts, hurts, hurts, his stare hurts so much.

It’s when he orders Phasma to send a new trooper to clean his room that he sees it, clear. Hux killed his own father, Phasma with him; surely it was Phasma who killed the man, surely it was Hux who planned how to do it. Kylo sends the message to Phasma.

The Force connects everything. That’s the reason why he and Hux, more or less, have something in common.

They send FN-2187 that day, and Phasma sends a message to his datapad:  _ The stormtrooper I sent belongs to the new unit, sir. In case of inconvenience, I’m ready to apply corrective action on the soldier. _

Kylo’s first thought when he sees the trooper approach his room is that they must have done something exceptionally well with this one during training.

He is the first trooper that looks at him, resolute, to the rift of the mask, and his first sensation isn’t fear.

For some reason, Kylo imagines this man could wield a light saber, then dismisses the thought for how absurd it is. He waits in the hall with strange interest; the trooper goes into his room, cleans the bathroom in fifteen minutes and comes out. Kylo detects aversion and a certain aberration, rejection in the measure everyone except for his Master feels for him, cold attention, and unsettlement; but not exactly fear.

He doesn’t need to check the bathroom. When he sees him leave he sends Phasma a message:  _ FN-2187 should be assigned to the front during the next battle deployment, corrective measures not needed.  _ He thinks at last that those kinds of creatures are the ones a Force sensitive one needs by their side, if just because they are Force sensitive as well.

And then he believes he sees blue like the shine of a kyber crystal, and the sensation of being wounded everywhere hits him like thunder. His whole face burns and he’s cold, like months ago, he’s so cold it aches in his bones. It’s like the ground is opening underneath his feet.

 

 

 

 

 

For two months the same trooper is cleaning his rooms every day, Han Solo remains in his dreams on every third night, and he’s spoken with Hux once a week to make joint reports for formality. Yesterday his Master summoned him to tell him the map they got is incomplete and there’s one more lead to find Skywalker.

Nothing has changed much, not really, even though the Universe has moved. Kylo has the feeling that unfortunate situations are piling up, yet at the same time the First Order is closer than ever to reaching its goals.

 

 

 

 

 

Hux comes up to the ship the day they finish building the Starkiller, because they are about to charge for the first time, and in the event of some malfunction it is wiser for the high ranks to watch from the Finalizer.

Ren is already staring out of the bridge window. In front of him a sun is dying.

They don’t speak until the last bolts of light are gone, consumed by the Starkiller.

Kylo breathes and his mask makes a sound like crunching paper. “So you have returned to darkness as well,” he says to the sun, because it has died completely.

Hux looks at him sideways for an instant. “Everything dies, yes,” he agrees, “life is pretty dark.”

Kylo laughs, surprised. His mask sounds a little macabre even to himself.  “It’s true,” he says, and the darkness that falls is absolute around everyone.

“What is missing?” Kylo asks, and Hux says they’ll have to wait for the confirmation of the temperature state.

Kylo, who feels the burn of the core of the moon, chafes to be ignored. A service droid asks them if they wish to have lunch where they are or wait until the evaluation of the base ends. Hux asks for his food immediately, and Kylo does as well.

Lunch is grilled meat. On the moon there are several kinds of edible birds. Kylo takes off the mask without thinking twice and eats in front of the window. The other sun that shines over the moon makes itself barely visible. Hux has the shadows of the window frame drawn on his face.

“This is also dead,” he says, biting on his meat, to make small talk. “It’s delicious; I’m not sorry for it.”

And Kylo cannot stand the restlessness, even if he now believes he understands what Hux meant when he said it wasn’t necessary for him to speak of what is admitted, or not denied, whatever.

“There’s something I still can’t see,” Kylo says and Hux doesn’t stop eating to look at him.

“There’s a lot of things you still can’t see,” he answers and Kylo allows himself not to believe him.

Kylo says, “I still don’t know what it is that you do not want me to know about my Master,” and Hux tenses visibly.

Hux is red like the tint of the oak’s root. Hux is pure systematic order like a calculator. His mind is quiet while he thinks that there are things he will never want to let anyone see of himself. He has the right to keep that, and because if the case presents itself he can always say them out loud if he decides to.

Then he looks at him straight to the face and says, “It’s clear to me that for Snoke I’m but a means to execute his power, and because of that I know he would get rid off me if I stop being useful to the cause.” Kylo doesn’t argue at all. “For that reason, I have no motive not to consider Snoke as a means to my ideal of power, and therefore, a means I would get rid off as well if it were convenient and if I had the chance.”

Kylo watches him thoroughly and without doubt admires him for having the courage to threaten the Supreme Leader of the Order in the middle of the bridge of one of his most terrifying vessels, in front of Kylo, one of his most terrifying subordinates.

Hux is most of all interested in power. Kylo knew that before he met him. That doesn’t make him disloyal. It is reasonable that he has acknowledged the fact that in the Order and throughout the Empire, those of high rank have a history of low life expectancy.

“Alright,” Kylo says, and when he looks sideways at him, he’s looking out at the darkness that still stretches in front of them. Kylo thinks he might have a possible ally. Hux thinks something similar of him, and as he thinks of Snoke, decides it might be true that he’d try to kill him if he had the chance. Maybe Hux would even try to kill Kylo as well.

“Starkiller charged and stable, temperature ideal on all cores sir, ready to fire.”

“Thank you, lieutenant,” says Hux.

Kylo breathes deep. “I chose the right planet in the end,” he says, and puts the mask on after he finishes eating.

Hux doesn’t even look at him. “It was my math from the beginning.”

Kylo would like to ask, of course, for the times Hux touched himself thinking of him, for the times he called out in pleasure with no shame and didn’t ask Kylo to stop looking. Kylo would like to wallow a little in the fact that Hux stopped denying that he thinks of him constantly; but they’ve not been talking for two months and Kylo could’ve asked anytime, could’ve come down to the moon and ripped it out him, but decided not to. His will not be the first act or the first word, so he decides not to say anything now either. He leaves it there where they both know everything happened and none of them says anything.

“I deserve a drink,” Hux says after he finishes eating. He leaves the plate on a table nearby and starts walking. Kylo knows where he’s heading.

“Do you want to toast with me?” Hux asks without looking at him, and Kylo follows.

 

 

 

 

 

The room is identical to how he left it months ago when he went to the moon to finish the construction. The bed is made and the middle of the duvet is unruly because Millicent left a trail before they left. Hux hasn’t seen his cat since he arrived to the bridge and let it walk away.

His room doesn’t smell of tobacco but Hux thinks he can sense the scent, as if the same memory he leaves everywhere he goes is stuck on the walls.

“Hmm,” Ren murmurs by his side. “That’s how the Force works.”

Hux ignores him, doesn’t believe him.

He pours two drinks, but Ren is still wearing the mask.

“What’s wrong?”

“With what?” and his voice sounds absurdly distorted when Hux can remember it so clear, from a moment ago.

“The mask,” he says anyway, even though Ren must already know.

Ren sighs, like he resents the trouble of explaining the obvious. Hux allows himself to feel offended.

“You’re not hiding anything from me, at least,” he says, still standing while Hux has already sat down at the table. Ren turns his head, “But it isn’t like you’re truly admitting it, either.”

Hux thinks he could roll his eyes to his nape, but he stands up instead.

“You’re insufferable,” Hux says, approaching, “everything you do displeases me, I don’t agree with almost anything of your personality.” And when Hux is in front of him, he exhales air he didn’t know he was holding inside. “But...” Hux doesn’t bother to pretend he isn’t angry about all this.

He lifts his hands. Ren allows him near and Hux takes off the mask.

Ren doesn’t move his head and in general doesn’t look at him. Hux puts it on the table.

“But what?” asks Ren, restlessness and frustration evident in his voice.

He’s so incorrigibly childish, Hux thinks.

“But I like it,” he says, resigned, offended.

“What?” asks Ren, of course, because it seems this is what it is about.

“All,” Hux breaths out slow, “I like it all about you”.

Ren keeps staring somewhere else, his hair slides against his neck and Hux reaches with his hand, stretches his fingers, caresses him. Takes his hair out of the way, gets closer.

It’s terrible, Hux thinks, to put himself in this situation. But Hux kisses Kylo’s neck without hesitation, the curve of his chin, his cheek. Ren breaths in shortly and then they kiss, at the same time, mouth to mouth.

Ren doesn’t know how to kiss. Hux thinks that he himself was a better kisser when he gave his first, but he opens his mouth and lets Kylo lick hastily between his lips.

Ren pushes away and looks at him with reproach, because evidently he felt judged and Hux expected no less, because he may desire him and he does, but Hux will always judge him and doesn’t believe he will ever find him not questionable. Something goes soft, anyway, in Ren’s eyes.

“Me too,” he says, kissing him with his mouth closed, he looks so furious that Hux thinks he might mean more than he lets on. “I like it too.”

Hux kisses him for the last time and looks at him. He’s mad that he had to say it, when it was already obvious. Ren is observing him, satisfied, because he evidently won. Hux goes back to the table thinking about Ren’s ability to read minds, and it seems obvious he would want to hear it out loud; it’s almost naïve on his part. Hux hasn’t stopped feeling a little vertigo since Ren said it, as well.

They have the drinks, toasting while they take off the gloves. Hux stares at his hand holding the glass and what makes him talk isn’t his need to touch his fingers and feel himself under his tact, but the anger. It courses through him to have missed him so much.

“I want to fuck,” he says, and decides to have the delicacy to look at him in the eye. “Kylo, let’s fuck.”

Ren seems amused. “Armitage,” he says.

Kylo is kilometers long naked, muscles white and freckles over his shoulders, freckles over his back, inside his thighs. Hux lays him down facing up, orders him to open his legs. Hux searches his coat for the lubricant he brought and orders Kylo to stay still, because when he touches Kylo he doesn’t stop moving.

“Do not command me,” Kylo orders him back, and Hux realises again that underneath it all, Ren is furious, uneasy, unstable.

He doesn’t say a word more out of agreement, but lifts him behind his knees and when Kylo is folded in a half and making an altered noise; Hux devours him, long erratic laps, kisses that start on his dick, end on his ass and start again. Kylo has been hard since the beginning, he sounds pained. Hux wonders if he could make him cry out of pleasure.

Hux fucks him with his mouth, slow, until Ren trembles with everything around him, and then Hux fucks him with his fingers, kissing his legs. Ren is looking at him like he hates him but his expression is open, and Hux feels he never saw him before, yet at the same time he knows him from memory, his freckles, the line of his mouth, has to kiss him, pull out his fingers and fumble for a condom.

“No,” he says, “do not stop touching me for real.”

And Hux remembers fucking completely dressed with gloves on and knowing Ren was seeing it all. Remembers Ren demanding him to take off the gloves the first time they were together and feels lightheaded.

But Hux responds so fast he asks himself if he’s drunk, and he isn’t. He doesn’t know if it’s worse, but he reaches between his legs and strokes his own cock with a hand full of lubricant.

“Fine, Kylo,” he says, “it’s fine,” and Hux falls, sinks into him.

It’s delicious. Ren doesn’t seem to have consideration for the pain of his body. Hux wonders if he might not even consider pleasure the way others do, but Ren stretches his neck and the blush covers his chest and his freckles, sweat sheens his collarbones and he’s  _ loud _ . Ren is so loud while Hux fucks him, even when he’s not making a sound.

After biting his neck and trembling breath against his mouth, Hux holds him by the waist and thrusts completely inside, deeper, there where Ren curves and his voice breaks.

“Kylo,” Hux says, “Kylo.”

While he’s coming he feels the heat of his body and a hand behind his neck. The last thrusts are brutal, raw sensibility, painful pleasure, it makes him moan and dig in his fingers, curse. Ren puts a hand between his legs and Hux watches him stroke himself twice before the whole world shakes and the lights go off.

When Ren comes it hurts a little. Hux cries out but searches for him in the dark, fucks him through the pain.

 

 

 

 

 

When the backup lights come on, Kylo is lying on his side while Hux touches his back, pressing with the pads of his fingers, dragging down. Kylo grunts, because it’s a good feeling.

“I’m going to take a shower,” says Hux.

Kylo doesn’t answer, just watches him walk naked across the room.

It’s hard to put names to things. Kylo prefers to think that love has never provided him with anything productive in the long term. In general, hate and anger have always been closer emotions, more decipherable, easier to transform into useful thoughts, into power. To Kylo hate and love aren’t opposites; they are close. They both implicate undeniable care. They are both a surrender to something, a confession of longing. The opposite of love and hate is their lack; in the end, it’s indifference.

For a long time, maybe never, Hux has been indifferent toward him.

Kylo supposes he longs for him, in many ways.

Kylo longs for him when Hux returns naked and wet from the bath, his hair without wax, reddish marks in the places Kylo held him too harshly, where he dragged his nails, where he bit back. Kylo longs for him tall and slim as he is, strong, bitter. Hux is a bastard and Kylo longs for the curve of his back, how soft his ass looks.

“I want to do it again,” he says, and Hux looks at him over his shoulder, “but not the way we just did it.”

Hux walks towards him, leaving the towel on the table beside the glasses. He’s half hard, staring with no shame. “It’d only be fair, yes,” he says.

Kylo realises then that Hux sees him as an equal. He doesn’t know if he sees Hux that way, but he feels the swirl of his blood, the pressure on his abdomen. “Armitage,” he says again.

Kylo does him with his mouth, Hux does it to himself with his own fingers. Right after Kylo is sure of doing it well, Hux orders him to stop, and Kylo digs his fingers into the muscles of Hux’s back and feels like killing him on the spot, mainly because Kylo usually wants to kill Hux, but foremost because it’s been days since he feels that it’s imminent that he’ll kill someone, maybe several, perhaps many. With all his anger he anticipates it.

“Do not order me,” he threatens, and licks him. Hux goes tense everywhere, gets harder, nods frowning, his eyes out of focus.

Kylo wants him so much that in the middle of the fear he finds peace, lost in the feeling of him. He turns him around by the waist so see him better and fucks him deep as he can. Hux trembles everywhere again, curves his back and gasps.

He’s overwhelmed; Kylo feels it, puts a hand between his shoulder blades and pushes down.

Hux moans and Kylo fucks him so much, so hard, he has to. To press him against the bed and bite at his neck, right at the point where his hair starts, and he smells of sweat and aftershave. And then Kylo realises that like him, Hux has never done this before, not like this. Kylo stops, also realising that he’s causing Hux pain.

Hux is fantastically tight, and crying. But he’s not crying out of pain, Hux cries out of pleasure.

Kylo has to do this, has to fuck him so hard.

It’s huge, Kylo feels it on the roof of his mouth, inside his chest. The giant rumble of his want, how much, how bad Hux longs for him. It’s enough, more than enough. Kylo fucks him until he forgets the world, until the only thing is Hux under his hands, Hux so right, so good, Hux everywhere.

And Hux vibrates, rutting against the bed. “Kylo” he cries, “Kylo” and he comes, “Kylo.”

He can’t help the sensation that goes though him, again, when pleasure absorbs him. Kylo feels infinite and doesn’t bother to hold back. Then darkness comes again, like a blanket.

He’s about to fall asleep, easy, the beating of Hux in the Force is warm, red; maybe that’s why Kylo is touching him, legs tangled.

“Ren,” Hux says, and he seems to be laughing at him without doing it, maybe Kylo’s feeling it in the Force.

“What?” Kylo asks, awake again.

“You blew the lights out twice while fucking with me. I don’t know whether it’s tender or absurd, but hold back.”

Kylo grunts a little. “I like darkness,” he says, and Hux breathes out in disapproval, a common gesture for him.

“Then use the Force to turn off the lights.”

Kylo laughs, despite himself.

But then he says, much more serious because he can’t help it, “Sometimes I can’t control how I like it. I never have.”

And then Hux remains silent, very still. Kylo wonders if he was able to transmit the feeling that darkness is from time to time something that eats him from the inside. He doesn’t know why he’s thinking about it right now.

“Hmm,” says Hux after a while, and then he falls asleep.

Kylo wonders for a moment because he doesn’t know what that sound means. He falls asleep soon after.

 

 

 

 

 

Hux cannot control the Force, but with a lot of awareness he can control his own mind. Lately he doesn’t even flutter during meetings.

Two days after, while in the orbit aboard the Finalizer, the Supreme Leader summons them. His orders are to take the moon on its first voyage to a solar system closer to the ones connected to the Republic, and then to continue on to Jakku. Walking to the bridge to give the order, Hux thinks that Snoke didn’t say much directly, but he’s sure Ren understood the underlying message.

“What’s in Jakku?” Hux asks him when he gets to his room, because Ren now lets him in whenever he wishes.

Ren looks at him and without taking off the mask he says, “Skywalker.”

 

 

 

 

 

Hux pours himself a brandy, no ice, smokes a cigarette staring out the window.

They have been traveling for three cycles on the Starkiller. The Finalizer is parked in a clearing they made in the middle of a forest in order to land it. It’s the first time Hux has seen the ship anywhere other than in space.

The brandy tastes rich and the cigarette makes his eyes clear.

They are a couple of hours away from their destiny, then they will leave for Jakku.

Not all days are good with Ren, of course. Hux hasn’t stopped reporting on him and Ren hasn’t stopped destroying things. Hux has the feeling that something is about to change, that he must pay attention all the time. And at the same time, he has the feeling that it doesn’t matter how much attention he pays, things will happen whether he wants them to or not. He feels old, and has an empire to rule.

Phasma asked him this morning if he could do something about Ren. She was very unobtrusive, very respectful. Hux wonders how evident it is to her.

He breaths in, steps out of his room and looks for Ren. Finds him at once, because they are onboard the Finalizer to take off immediately, and their rooms are side by side.

Ren lets him in, and Hux sees the curved line of his body under the sheets, the thickness of his hair on the pillow. The lights are off and when he closes the door there’s only darkness.

“Leave the ship alone,” he says in the gloom, because since they slept together Ren is more insufferable every day, every moment. Hux believes it’s not related to them fucking, but with the universe receding. It’s like something huge is about to change; even he feels it.

“Hold me,” Ren asks him.

Hux thinks Ren isn’t exactly a sexual creature. He has been, but Hux intuits that he was never with anyone before, and it’s possible that he is only in certain ways. Which is fine. Hux thinks he will question himself for fucking him his whole life, anyway.

To give him affection, on the other hand… is confusing. Hux undresses and folds the uniform to use it when they arrive at Jakku. He sits on the edge of the bed. Ren has freckles over his shoulders and Hux cannot see them, thinks bitterly that today he destroyed a hall with such madness that even the security cameras were damaged.

He lays down, horizontal. The line of Ren’s body is long and white. He holds him.

They breathe against the other and Hux gets the feeling that this time Ren won’t fall asleep even if he’s in bed. It isn’t like they have slept many times together, it’s more like he’s been realising for a long time that sometimes Ren watches all, Hux included, with a constancy that doesn’t allow sleep.

Ren looks for him in the darkness and finds him and Hux, well, Hux  _ is _ sexual. He won’t blame himself for having it hard when it was Ren who started to kiss him. Hux growls inside his mouth.

“I thought you didn’t like the way I do it,” says Ren, and Hux opens his eyes, can’t see him but imagines him.

“I never thought that. I thought you were inexperienced.” Hux allows himself to kiss him again, shortly. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like it.”

Ren vibrates against him, kissing him with his mouth closed.

“Then you want me to kiss you,” Ren says, licking his lips, and Hux laughs a little.

“Yes,” he answers, kissing back. “I haven’t told you where I want you to, though.”

And Ren stops. The lights go on barely. Ren has a strange expression on his face. “You want my mouth again,” he says.

“Yes, please,” says Hux, pulling off his underwear.

Kylo is on top of him in a second.

Hux comes with Ren’s hair between his fingers and his mouth doing it good, good, good.

“Kylo,” he says.

Ren kisses him and his mouth tastes like both of them, bitter. It’s the best kiss Ren’s given him. Hux wants to kiss him more, a lot. He says so.

And Ren does, slow and breathing against his mouth. Hux feels him boiling everywhere, hard against his abdomen.

“Kylo,” he says, and Ren has clouded eyes. Hux suspects Ren likes the sound of his voice. Hux knows Ren likes Hux to tell him, to tell him everything.

“I want to make you come,” Hux says, and Kylo trembles a little, bites underneath his chin, “with my mouth,” and Kylo moans, and lies down facing up, heavy and pulling his pants down, his eyes closed, blushing, his cock jumping faintly on his belly. “Handsome,” Hux says with no filter, and Kylo turns his head, red on his face, red everywhere, Hux thinks Ren is close to coming.

Doing Ren with his mouth is an experience, Hux feels him so much. Ren is pressing behind his neck, moaning, and it’s delicious. Hux lets himself be taken to the bottom, shallows around him and Ren makes a vulnerable, fantastic sound before fucking into Hux abruptly, and, “Ah, please,” come trembling.

 

 

 

 

 

Kylo sleeps one hour.

It’s enough to dream, and in his dream is Leia Organa, dressed in dark blue, with her hair loose and tied at the same time, her eyes warm and her  _ force _ , her incredible way of existing.

“Son, my son,” she says.

Kylo Ren rejects her immediately, lights up his saber out of reflex.

“Ben,” she says, so beautiful, “my love, I mean you no harm.” Kylo could scream.

“I do,” he says, like an insult. “I do mean you harm.”

Kylo Ren sees her cry while she doesn’t cry at all. “Son,” she says. “Do you really want to kill us all? Will that really bring you relief?”

And Kylo with much fury thinks that he hates her for this, hates them both for abandoning him and then demanding his love by obligation. He tells himself and Han Solo and Leia Organa, when love is an order, hate is a pleasure.

“It will bring me strength,” he answers, and forces himself to block her, because he’s exhausted of being reached by the light, because he cannot rest for a second without temptation chasing him, and that’s why he wakes up.

Kylo is every process of the ship when it comes to life. He’s the acceleration of the engines, the cooling of the refrigerators and the jump to the hyperspace. Kylo feels his chest is  _ coming out _ of his chest. The anticipation gives him vertigo, it turns his head over.

He sits up, stops being close to Hux for a moment, and his head hurts. He feels cold. His face burns.

“You will kill them all,” Hux says, in the middle of the darkness.

“Who are they?” Kylo asks, because he didn’t think to have this talk anywhere besides within the Force.

Hux stretches a little. “Whoever you have to kill. I don’t know how I know, but I think I’m starting to know you.”

Kylo snorts, because that’s not true.

“If it’s painful to kill them,” Hux goes on, and Kylo is breathless, “I will kill them for you.”

Kylo thinks that no, he has to kill them himself or it won’t be the same, but he refuses to cry. It unnerves him to feel his eyes burning. Hux stretches a hand and puts it on his back, warm, red. Kylo relaxes at the touch and even though Hux, in his own way, is a good place to find relief, he doesn’t feel relief.

“Come for me,” he says, not knowing why. “Come for me when it’s all over.”

Hux rolls his eyes. “If I have to,” he says, and yawns before falling sleep again.

Kylo Ren knows that in half an hour Phasma will broadcast throughout the ship to prepare for deployment on Jakku. He feels it, but he lays down next to Hux and focuses on his breathing.

Hux stands up first, turns on the lights, fixes his hair in front of the mirror, dresses in an instant; then he looks at Kylo with disapproval.

“Fifteen minutes, Ren,” he says and steps out of his room, coat over his shoulders, datapad in his hands. Millicent is waiting for him outside the door.

Kylo feels too aware of all things, so he meditates a little, breaths deep, searches for relief.

The night is long and black, on Jakku.

The night, that infinite night.

That night Ben Solo misses his mother a lot.

 

_ The end. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://gryffindornight.tumblr.com)


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